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More sad news from the world of pro wrestling today as Jim Myers, better known as WWE Hall of Famer George ‘The Animal’ Steele, has reportedly passed away at age 79. The news of Steele’s condition was first shared on Eric Simms of ESS Promotions’ Facebook page, and an update on Thursday evening mentioned that the WWF legend had been moved to hospice care. On Friday, both he and Hulk Hogan first tweeted news of Steele’s passing, as well as a family friend who posted on Facebook. The news was later confirmed by WWE.

Debuting way back in 1967, George Steele gained notoriety and popularity as “The Animal,” a hairy, green-tongued human monster that ate turnbuckle pads, became infatuated with female valets like Miss Elizabeth, and carried around a bald My Pet Monster that looked like him. His highest profile matches included challenging ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage for the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 2, as well as being ring-side for one of the greatest matches of all-time, Savage vs. Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat at WrestleMania 3.

Despite retiring in 1988 and being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1995, Steele’s career continued throughout the 90s and well into the 2000s. The Animal teamed with Taka Michinoku (of all people) on a 1997 episode of Raw, returned as part of The Oddities in 1998, and even competed in a match against Jeff Jarrett on WCW Monday Nitro in 2000. His most recent appearance on WWE TV happened in 2010, when he showed up to “Old School Raw” and helped Kofi Kingston defeat David Otunga.

Steele was a true star of pop culture, becoming a reference on Seinfeld (to explain one of Jerry’s girlfriends’ “man hands”) and appearing as wrestler-turned-actor Tor Johnson in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. The Animal will certainly be missed. If you aren’t familiar with his work, we’ve included a few choice videos to show you how important a man can be by eating some green food coloring and pretending to eat foam padding. Rest in power, Animal.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Stone Cold Steve Austin and Bret Hart played WHEELCHAIR MIND GAMES, culminating in the return of Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart and Austin getting tossed off the stage and sent to the hospital. Also on the show, literally nothing else even 1% as interesting or fun as Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for May 5, 1997.

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Worst: As The 2X4 Turns

This is a picture of Ahmed Johnson hitting Rockabilly in the face with a guitar. I’ve seen people play Russian Roulette, and they weren’t cheating death as much as Billy Gunn was letting Ahmed By God Johnson swing a musical instrument at his face. Look how hard Ahmed’s swinging, the force of his blow has literally propelled him into the air. Good lord. This headshot is probably why Billy’s spent the last 20 years like, “I like asses! I’m an ASS MAN! I love to love ’em!” He’s not into asses, he has fucking brain damage.

This is a big episode for the love child of John Henry and Jim Duggan. Up first, he loses this match to Rockabilly via disqualification. Then, oh God, he attempts to pull a fast one on wrestling Rhodes scholar Crush by pulling a Locke from Final Fantasy VI and stealing an NPCs clothes. I’m not kidding. Let’s take it from the top.

At IN YOUR HOUSE 15: A COLD DAY IN HELL, Ahmed is set to wrestle a gauntlet match (kind of) against the Nation of Domination. If he wins all three falls, the Nation will be forced to disband. I say “kind of” in parenthesis (and quotes) because it’s not actually a gauntlet match; Ahmed just has to wrestle Crush, Savio Vega and Faarooq “during the course of the evening,” meaning he gets to rest between matches and it’s honestly not that big of a deal. Also meaning “Ahmed Johnson can’t remember three straight matches, so let’s let him go to the back between them so he doesn’t kill somebody.”

On Raw, Faarooq puts Crush in a gauntlet match against three jobbers so jobbish you can’t even find their names on the Internet. Seriously, even WWE Network calls them “jobbers.” The first guy is future NWA Heavyweight Champion Adam Pearce, who showed up a few weeks back to lose to the Nation as “Adam O’Brien.” He’s got “AP” on his boots, so we’ll say he’s “Advance Placement” Adam O’Brien.

Guy number two deserves a special mention for wearing one of those weird lingerie pieces they put in WWE video game create-a-wrestler modes that you’d never use, but have to scroll through when you’re looking for a wifebeater. Look at this thing:

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Nice lederhosen, dork. He was probably backstage like, “my tights are gonna fall down,” and Adam Pearce was like, “I got you, bro, I’ve got a roll of duct tape, I’ll give you them Billie Kay stomach blockers.” And presumably guy was like, “who’s Billie Kay,” and pre-cog-ass Adam Pearce was like, “don’t worry about it.”

The back of it looks even worse, which you can see in the background of this pic of MYSTERIOUS JOBBER NUMBER THREE:

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oh my, who could that be

During jobber #2’s match, the announce team talks about hearing a commotion backstage, and how they’re unable to send cameras back. It turns out that commotion was someone mysteriously beating up jobber 3 and taking his place. Jobber 3 runs in when Crush has his back turned, hits a Pearl River Plunge and scores an instant victory. He then rolls out of the ring, and like before his feet even hit the ground he’s removing the disguise.

This is clandestine Ahmed Johnson. His disguise is a Green Bay Packers Starter Jacket and PANTYHOSE over his head. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Ahmed Johnson, but pantyhose can’t disguise his Exogorth head. He runs down to the ring and nobody from the Nation is paying attention to him, and before he even attacks, he removes the jacket hood. Then he hits Ahmed Johnson’s finishing move, and before he’s at the ramp he’s got the pantyhose off and is like, “LOOK, TIS I, AHMED JOHNSON.” As if nobody could tell. And THAT’S when the Nation notices what’s going on and the fact that Crush has lost, meaning Ahmed could’ve just jogged down as Ahmed Johnson in his red panties and 45 elbow pads, hit a Pearl River Plunge and gotten the hell out of dodge before the feeling reached Faarooq’s brain. Instead, we get the world’s largest and stupidest Solid Snake attacking the bad guys from behind. YUH! GUH! DUH!

Spoiler alert, this story does not end at A COLD DAY INSIDE OF HELL. It goes on for another year.

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Best: Don’t Let Me Get In My Zone

One of the best (albeit not exactly perfect) parts of this episode is the sudden dedication to “real stories.”

The first is for Ken Shamrock, who gets a video bio about his life growing up as a violent nut without a family, and how channeling his rage into competitive fighting has not only helped him find a purpose in life, it’s GIVEN him a family, both in and out of the sport. It’s great, especially in that it reveals the only clothes Shamrock owns are those windbreaker warmup suits and HAMMER STRENGTH tees. It also features the introduction of Ken Shamrock’s “zone,” which is, for modern fans, the place where he hears voices. His explanation of The Zone is like, “when I go into my zone, I’m the only one in my zone, and nobody’s allowed in my zone except me, you can’t come into my zone, the zone has an occupancy of one and that’s me, if you try to get into my zone I won’t let you into my zone.” He shows up on commentary for Goldust/Vader to explain it a little more, in case you didn’t get it.

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Speaking of Goldust, he gets a sit-down interview to introduce the world to Dustin Runnels, the man behind the paint. They’ve been working hard to change Goldust from a pansexual creeper Oscar statue to an Average Joe who just plays mind games, and this is that story’s pièce de résistance. We learn that he, like Shamrock, is just a family man who grew up trying to impress his dad, and though they’re estranged, he hopes they can find peace. This is what allowed Dustin to play the character off-and-on for 20+ years; the ability to go into the character, but step back from it and remind us that he’s a RHODES, and that the Rhodes are fucked-up wrestling royalty.

The segment is very good but doesn’t really hold up in places, though, particularly the part where they compare him breaking kayfabe to gay people coming out of the closet in the ’90s, and when he says he “knows how Ellen feels.” You, uh, probably don’t, but I get what you’re saying, and I know y’all are trying to be nice.

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Best: This

The number isn’t blurred out, your brain’s just having a seizure from the gloriousness of 1997 Sunny wearing nothing but boots and a t-shirt.

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Best: A PACK OF LIONS

So, back to the Hart Foundation. This week, we finally get them at their full strength: Wheelchair Bret Hart, Blasphemous Hippie Brian Pillman, Journeyman Jim The Anvil, Caucasian Ultimo Dragon Owen Hart, and Confused Anthropomorphic Muscle-Puppy Davey Boy Smith. They open the show in the ring to thank every fan in the world except the lousy stinking pack of lousy stinking hyena American fans, and say they’re gonna do to “Boy Toy” Shawn Michaels what they did to “Adult Collectable” Steve Austin. They didn’t call him that, but suddenly I don’t want to call him anything else.

Anyway, the spend the entire show backstage looking for Shawn Michaels, bursting into the locker room and attacking some rando with long hair who stumbles out of the men’s room. They even go out into the parking lot and look for him under trucks and in barrels (?), which is hilarious because he’s just at gorilla waiting to do a 15-minute in-ring interview with Vince McMahon. Great detective work, Canada.

Shawn explains that (1) he’s not attacking the Hart Foundation to help Stone Cold Steve Austin, he’s doing it to hurt the Hart Foundation, and (2) he’ll return to the ring in one month’s time at King of the Ring. His major talking point, again, is that Freedom Of Speech means Americans can do “whatever they want, whenever they want” — it doesn’t — and that if Bret doesn’t like it here, he better not let the door hit him in his “Canadian butt” on the way out. He begrudgingly admits that the United States isn’t totally perfect, having elevated “someone like Homer Simpson to icon status,” but that we’re still the best. Bret, in the single greatest act of babyfacedom in pro wrestling history, shows up on the TitanTron and says this:

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TELL HIM, BRET.

Bret is like, “you seem fine to wrestle now, how about you accept the challenge of Jim The Anvil Neidhart.” So Neidhart runs out, and before like, five punches have been thrown, the rest of the Hart Foundation’s out there too. That brings out the Legion of Doom to help Shawn. They have a match up next against a guy from Canada. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS!

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Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon, the only wrestlers boring enough to do live picture-in-picture promos while they’re walking to the ring in some parallel timeline, remind us that they are the Most Exciting Wrestlers, and that the fans will cheer for THEM this time, and not the Road Warriors. The announce team is straight up like, “uh, y’all are boring as balls,” which will always be one of the weirdest things WWE does. If a wrestler is boring, try to make them less boring maybe instead of pointing out how boring they are. Nobody’s ever gotten behind a “boring” gimmick. It’s boring.

But yeah, the match ends shockingly with the British Bulldog distracting the referee and Road Warrior Animal, allowing Owen Hart to sneak in and snap Hawk’s neck across the top rope, giving Furnas and LaFon … is this right? The win? Sure, whatever.

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All of that informs the main event, because the key component of Vince Russo’s Raws is that everything tied together and everybody had a place. Even if that place was “shitty Honky Tonk Man who gets instrumented in the face by a guy we couldn’t physically trust to hold a kitten.”

The Hart Foundation keeps trying to jump Shawn Michaels backstage, and Stone Cold Steve Austin makes the save. Well, less “makes the save” and more “agrees with Shawn’s point that they aren’t helping each other, they’re hurting Bret.” We end up with Stone Cold vs. Bulldog in the main, and you know how that ends. Kick, wham, stunner. We’re far enough into Austin’s importance now that anyone who isn’t Bret or Shawn or the Undertaker is getting got.

After the match, the Hart Foundation attacks. That brings out Shawn, the Legion of Doom and Furnas and LaFon for a MELEE. The worst part is that Furnas and LaFon don’t seem to remember which side they’re on, and just kinda attack everybody. I wonder why you guys never caught on? Anyway, the fight breaks down when the Undertaker’s dong interrupts, and everyone bails until it’s just Taker and Austin left alone. Taker sees Austin carrying the WWF Championship as a foreign object again, objects, and beats the shit out of him in a pull-apart brawl.

It’s weird to see Austin positioned as the new babyface hotness against an evil Canadian heel faction but still propped up against the Undertaker as the default bad guy, but I suppose it let Austin keep some of his edge. He wasn’t just suddenly a fan favorite, we just liked how psychotically violent and one-track-minded he was.

Like usual, great stuff from the Harts and Austin, too much “I WANT TO BE THE ONE YOU CHEER” from Shawn, bad gothic eyebrows from the Undertaker, and bad everything else from Ahmed and the Nation. Raw rolls on, after this!

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Bret Hart has unleashed his PACK OF LIONS on the World Wrestling Federation, and wheelchair shenanigans abound. Plus, Ahmed Johnson sucks at disguises and almost killed Billy Gunn by shoot smashing a guitar over his entire face.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows.

Up first, let’s check and make sure nothing happened while the WWF was in your house.

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Before We Begin

Here’s what you need to know about Dixie Chicks In Your House: Cold Day In July. Wait, sorry, the actual name of this show was COLD DAY IN HELL, as in, “it’ll be a cold day in hell before you enjoy a show with three Ahmed Johnson matches on it.”

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Ahmed Johnson Failed To Disband The Nation Of Domination

As you might’ve expected, Ahmed Johnson failed to live up to his “you’re going down” mantra by allowing Faarooq to go up.

The rub is that if Ahmed could use the power of the people, the assisted power of a small wooden plank and the protective power of like 17 kneepads to defeat three members of the Nation of Domination in the same night, the group would have to break up. He managed to defeat Crush and Savio Vega, the guys he’s been defeating every week for months, but was unable to defeat Faarooq thanks to the damned numbers game.

Because the World Wrestling Federation is the worldwide leader in telling inspirational sports stories about people of color, Ahmed would rebound from this setback by joining the Nation, shitting the bed with injuries for a year, then getting turned on by them again before ultimately losing and leaving the company. Maybe he should’ve strapped some kneepads to his neck and forearms?

Ken Shamrock And Vader Beat Each Other To Death

You might’ve heard of this one. This was Shamrock’s official WWF debut (against someone other than his sparring partners, in something more than an exhibition) and features (1) Vader getting his nose broken, (2) Vader angrily throwing one of the dopest lariats in WWF history, and (3) Shamrock just aimlessly kicking and punching for real because he doesn’t totally understand how wrestling works yet.

From a Vader fansite about backstage fights, via Reddit:

There’s a myth attached to the match that Vince chose Vader to fight Shamrock to punish him for being stiff against (almost) the entire locker room, more like Vince knew that Vader-Shamrock would make for a classic match, and it was. Not knowing how to work a match, Ken was as stiff as hell, “I didn’t realize how stiff I was in there with him. I wondered why Vader broke from the script at that point because I didn’t realize that I’d actually hurt Vader and, as a result, Vader was PISSED,” Shamrock later said, due to Vader bailing from the ring. If you watch the match closely, you can see Vader telling Shamrock (and the ref!) to ease up, ease up.” Shamrock broke Vader’s nose in four places and the Mastodon couldn’t walk for several days after the fight. Few seconds before the end Vader was finally fed-up with Shamrock and hit him with a hard clothesline, almost knocking him out, which awakened Ken. After that point Shamrock finally eased up for good and the match finished smoothly. Post-match, the viewer can see, Vader clearly was PISSED! But more at being hurt, rather than getting hurt, “That’s okay man; I was allowed to be me.”

Vader however got back at Shamrock at following encounters in the ring. Notably one time (after winning winning via count-out), as he walked away from the ring after the victory, he made fun of Shamrock’s nickname by asking the camera “Who’s the World’s Most Dangerous Man now?”. Ken commented (on the FMW rematch) “I got powerbombed twice, I had a problem before I went there. I had a tear in my lung, and I did not realize it at the time. I was coughing up blood earlier than that, I just passed it off as whatever, it goes away. Then when I went to Japan, I got powerbombed twice, and I remember choking, I could not breathe, I was spitting up blood. I was about to pass out because I was drowning in my own blood. It was pretty serious. Then when I went to the doctors they said that I had torn my lung.”

Or, “SLAP ME AS HARD AS POSSIBLE.”

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The Hart Foundation Cost Stone Cold Steve Austin The WWF Championship

Before I forget, how funny is it that they got screencaps courtesy of WWF Magazine? Was the editor the only guy with a TV tuner card back in the day?

But yeah, Stone Cold Steve Austin had The Undertaker pinned with a Stone Cold Stunner — read: he had a convincing 2-count before the Undertaker would’ve kicked out, sat up and Tombstoned him — when Brian Pillman jumped the rail and rang the bell. Undertaker loves a good “somebody rang the bell when they weren’t supposed to” angle. In the ensuing confusion, Taker is able to (you guessed it) sit up and hit a Tombstone to retain the championship.

It’s a lot of fun, though, and one of the best Austin/Taker matches because it’s one of the only high profile fights they had before Austin got his neck broken. The angle is a lot of fun too, even though it probably should’ve just happened on a Raw, and Austin even returns after the fight to Stunner Undertaker again in one of the defining Stone Cold Steve Austin moments ever. If you liked it, buckle up, because you’re gonna see it about 200,000 more times between now and the time I stop writing these.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War for May 12, 1997.

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Worst: Triple H Gets Eliminated From The 1997 King Of The Ring

If you’re like me and read that like, “wait, didn’t Triple H win the 1997 King of the Ring,” just wait a week.

This week, though, Nation of Domination band-reinforcer Ahmed Johnson defeats Hunter Hearst Helmsley in round one of the King of the Ring tournament when Chyna interferes, swatting him with a chair and causing a disqualification. What’s interesting is that the announce team spends most of the match talking about Ahmed’s troubled past as a gang member and a criminal, which is a hell of a lot like when Triple H wrestled Booker T at WrestleMania and they did the same thing. Hoping for a Triple H/D’Lo Brown match soon where Jim Ross speaks in hushed tones about the hard knock life you’ve gotta have to end up a CPA.

Also interesting is the post-match brawl. Ahmed and Helmsley get into it on the stage, and Ahmed starts grounding and pounding him. Chyna jogs over to make the save for Hunter, kicking Ahmed in the shoulder a few times. Ahmed completely no-sells it, so Chyna snatches him around the throat and (apparently) shoot rear naked chokes him back.

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Ahmed’s supposed to be the company’s biggest and most powerful bad-ass, and Chyna just had him dead to rights on the stage in front of everybody. Fun fact: Both Triple H and Chyna were both Intercontinental Champions after this, but Ahmed wasn’t. Should’ve sold those boots, bro!

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Worst: The Future Of The Light Heavyweight Division

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Desperado Joe Gomez and The Renegade fell in love and had a baby? If so, here’s the WWF debut of SCOTT PUTSKI, the son of Hall of Famer Ivan Putski and, if I’m remembering correctly, a character from 3D Ballz. Putski’s basically what would’ve happened if David Flair had grown out his hair and done a bunch of steroids before his debut, but still forgot to learn how to wrestle.

Putski goes up against Leif Cassidy, and poor Cassidy’s gotta walk this newborn faun through everything. I honestly wouldn’t trust Putski to stand up unassisted for five minutes, much less wrestle. All the while, Jim Ross is talking about how much he loves seeing these young light heavyweights, because they always give you great action. And just like today, WWE’s idea of “light heavyweights” is, “light guys who wrestle like heavyweights.”

Putski wins, causing Cassidy to lose his mind, flip out and attack him in what would prove to be the early stages of the transition into crazy-ass Al Snow. Putski manages to win the post-match attack, too, because we haven’t gotten to the worst of the anti-Rocky Maivia backlash yet and haven’t convinced Vince McMahon that 1997 wrestling fans are not super into the handsome muscular sons of guys from the 70s.

It’s a shame there’s no good actual light heavyweight wrestling on this show, huh?

Best: Good Actual Light Heavyweight Wrestling

Oh hey, here’s Rob Van Dam showing up from ECW to prove he can compete in the “big leagues,” earning himself the “Mr. Monday Night” nickname he’d take back to Philadelphia and use to piss everyone off slash make everyone love him for the next four-to-twenty years. He’s up against the teen jobber version of the nefarious BROTHER NERO. If you don’t understand the difference between exciting light heavyweight wrestling and boring bullshit WWE light heavyweight wrestling, watch Putski/Cassidy and Van Dam/Hardy back to back. It’s absolutely bizarre that nobody in the front office saw young Rob Van Dam and went, “we should build the division around him.”

Van Dam wins with a Five-Star Frog Splash followed by a split-legged moonsault, which wows the crowd and instantly puts him ahead of every sloppy luchador who has ever Whispered in the Wind in silence on Raw. Van Dam and Hardy would have so many more matches in multiple companies, including the only good match at the INVASION pay-per-view and a disappointingly ambitious ladder match at SummerSlam 2001.

Now that we’re done being exciting and interesting, we return you to your regularly scheduled Raw.

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Worst: The Rest Of The Night’s Nation Of Domination Content

In one of the most unfair matches you’ll ever see booked, the Legion of Doom squashes Nation of Domination representatives J.C. Ice and Wolfie D. To put it into perspective for modern fans, imagine if Braun Strowman and Roman Reigns teamed up to face James Ellsworth and Carmella. The obvious highlight are the Doomsday Devices, which have Ice and Wolfie turned completely upside down before they’ve left Animal’s shoulders.

On a fun slash sad note, this is the end of PG-13’s WWF run, the end of the raps for the Nation of Domination, and the match that cost them an ECW job because they looked like such losers. They looked too much like losers for ECW, where Balls Mahoney was popular and had signature chants.

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Finally, WWF Champion The Undertaker takes on Savio Vega in one of those matches where a Nation guy’s about to lose, so everyone else from the Nation hits the ring and starts stomping. I swear, this was the most popular match type of 1997. I’m surprised Scott Putski vs. Leif Cassidy didn’t end by DQ with a Nation of Domination run-in.

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The only Best for the Nation on the night is the pre-match promo from Faarooq, wherein he talks about how hard it is for a black man to make it in the World Wrestling Federation. He calls Vince on never having had a black Heavyweight Champion — extra harsh and true coming from the guy who was WCW’s first black Heavyweight Champion — and how they only allow “token” black champions for a short time like Ahmed Johnson with the Intercontinental Championship, or Bobo Brazil being U.S. Champion. He says he’s going to end discrimination with kicking and punching.

In an hilariously tone-deaf moment, Vince interrupts Faarooq to Um Actually him. “This has nothing to do with you being black, what’s the matter with you?” Says the dude who is STILL putting every black guy in the company in a team together or feuding them against one another based on which ones “love to have fun” and smile a lot. Spoiler alert: Faarooq never ends up WWF Champion.

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Best: The Bearer Of Bad News

As for the Undertaker, he’s being threatened by Mankind and a returning Paul Bearer, who has bandages wrapped around his face like Darkman. Bearer is giving Undertaker one more chance to make amends with him and get back together or else he’ll reveal a secret that only the Undertaker knows. Don’t want to give anything away yet, but it might involve Taker’s dead parents and the burn victim with fire powers Paul keeps locked up in the basement. Maybe.

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Best: And Now, Whatever Bret Hart And Stone Cold Steve Austin Are Doing

So this week’s episode actually opens with another classic Wheelchair Bret Hart promo, featuring him putting over the Hart Foundation as his dream team and accusing Stone Cold Steve Austin of being nothing but “Texas cliches with barnyard overtones.” I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but that might be the funniest and most Bret Hart way anyone has ever been described. I wish they’d skipped the “Texas Rattlesnake” and “toughest SOB in the WWE” marketing for Austin and went hard on the BARNYARD OVERTONES.

Bret says he’s got a surprise for the audience, but gets annoyed that they won’t shut up and stop booing him so he just wheels away. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING works as effectively in wrestling as a heel saying, “if you don’t be quiet, I’m not gonna do the thing you don’t want me to do!” That shit makes a “USA” chant sound like a Carmella entrance.

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Later in the episode, “U.S. Acres” Steve Austin cuts a great promo setting up his next six months of feuds, talking about how he carried Brian Pillman in the “bush leagues” and how Hart is a snake that needs his head cut off. He also wonderfully calls Hart “the Judas priest,” which is the most southern old man way of saying someone’s a hypocrite. Check out the barnyard overtones on Steve! Thank goodness Corey Graves or Mauro Ranallo weren’t calling Raw in 1997, or they would’ve been stumbling over each other to scream about how Austin is flying to the top of the World Wrestling Federation on the sad wings of destiny.

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Owen Hart and the British Bulldog win the episode’s bizarre but at least different main-event, a four team elimination tag team match including Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon, the Head Bangers and the New Blackjacks. My full review of the match is, “they had to kill seven minutes near the end of the show and they were out of toy commercials.”

After that, though, we get one of the famous (and most infamous) moments of the Bret Hart/Shawn Michaels rivalry. What we see on the actual episode is Bret calling out Shawn, Shawn answering, and Bret cutting a good-to-bad-to-good-and-back-to-bad promo about how Shawn’s career is “hot and cold,” and how he bets he wishes he could superkick him right now but “doesn’t have the insides” to do it. He keeps talking until the show goes off the air. After THAT, Bret stands up and continues goading Shawn until he gets superkicked, and falls backwards into and then out of the wheelchair.

Now, what actually caused this varies depending on who you ask in what year and when and what mood they’re in when you ask. According to the rivalries DVD, Bret missed a cue and just kept talking, and neither guy knew they’d messed up the timing of the segment until they got to the back. There’s also the story that Bret did it on purpose to keep Shawn from getting his big moment on live TV. The extended version shows up on the Network, though, so check it out if you want to judge for yourself. There’s also the thought that all that’s bullshit, and they “kept the cameras rolling” to try to build hype for next week. After the after, the Foundation jumps Shawn until Austin makes the save.

No matter what, that kick into and out of the chair is pretty great. Join us next week for the reveal of Bret’s surprise, and Shawn’s commentary on the weather that completely cancels it out.

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Former NWA and WWF legend ‘Outlaw’ Ron Bass has passed away at age 68, following complications from a burst appendix. According to reports, originally reported by PWInsider, Bass wasn’t aware of the burst appendix and waited a week to get medical help. The delay was too much, and he passed as a result.

Bass (real name Ronald Heard) competed as a rough-and-tumble cowboy from his debut in 1975 until his retirement in 1991, holding championships in the National Wrestling Alliance, was an International Tag Team Champion with Stan Hansen in All Japan Pro Wrestling, and was even the extremely dope “Brass Knuckles Champion” in Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. Modern fans may know Bass best from his work in the World Wrestling Federation in the late 1980s, where he took on champions like Hulk Hogan, was a member of the Honky Tonk Man’s team at the inaugural Survivor Series in 1987, and competed in the first Royal Rumble in 1988. Fans of With Spandex may know him from a bloody encounter with Black Bart (and James J. Dillon) at Starrcade ’85.

We send our condolences to Bass’ family and friends, as pro wrestling continues to lose its cowboys. If you aren’t familiar with his work, here are a few clips to familiarize you. Rest in power, Outlaw.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: We experienced In Your House: Cold Day In Hell, a pay-per-view extravaganza built around all the stuff you see on Raw plus Ken Shamrock breaking Vader’s nose for real. On Raw proper, Bret Hart cut a promo so rambly that the show just went off the air before it got to the part where Shawn Michaels superkicks him into, then out of a wheelchair. Also, Scott Putski!

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War for May 19 (gasp), 1997.

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Best: Crush Gets Cerebrally Assassinated

This week’s biggest storyline development (non-Hart Foundation edition) is that Vader isn’t medically cleared to wrestle in the first round of the King of the Ring with a Heavyweights-style severely deviated septum, so Hunter Hearst Helmsley — the man who was eliminated from the tourney last week — will get a second chance and sub in. As Not The WWF President Because We Don’t Know Where Gorilla Monsoon Is Right Now Gerald Brisco explains, the referee in that match told Hunter that he could only advance via pinfall or submission, so Hunter thought he couldn’t get disqualified. He did, and they don’t want any legal action to take place, so they’re giving him a second shot.

Instead of just beating Crush in a wrestling match, which we’ve seen Ahmed Johnson do about 75 times in the last six months, Helmsley decides to roll the dice and respond to expected Nation of Domination cheating with cheating of his own. He’s about to hit a Pedigree when Savio Vega gets up on the apron, causing the referee to meander over and yell at him to get on the floor. During this distraction, Helmsley tells Chyna to get up on the apron. It doesn’t work, but as Crush is reversing the momentum, the referee wanders over from Vega to Chyna. So with HER distracted, Crush drags Hunter back over to Vega. Vega fucks it up, accidentally kicks Crush in the face and costs him the match. Vince Russo was backstage putting this shit together like a sonata.

The Nation argue after the match, and the only guy who’d been eliminated in the King of the Ring tournament before this episode moves on to round two.

Best: Jim Ross, Sports Analyst

You know how sometimes Mauro Ranallo will ignore everything that’s actually happening on a wrestling show to shoehorn in a comparison about hip-hop, or something that happened in the news that week? Jim Ross did a version of that, but his was always college sports. And instead of sounding like he needed to drop a reference, he just sounds like an aging southern dude who’d rather be talking about sports than wrestling.

There’s a great moment during Helmsley/Crush where Ross goes off on a tangent about how lucky HHH is, saying he’s as lucky as the San Antonio Spurs, who just got the first pick in the NBA Draft. He goes on to explain that they’ll likely pick Tim Duncan of Wake Forest. Good pick!

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Best: Jerry Lawler Vs. Alabama

Raw is live in Mobile, Alabama, so Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler goes full Andy Kaufman by interviewing some “real Alabamans,” aka the most pinhead redneck motherfuckers you could imagine. Lawler drops all his best sub-Jeff Foxworthy redneck material on them, calling them an “orthodontist’s dream,” saying the guy sleeps with his sister and making fun of their accents while happily mugging for the camera. They’re barely functioning as humans, so they don’t know what’s going on and don’t get upset. It’s the cheapest, oldest and easiest way to get heat, but as someone who briefly lived in Tuscaloosa, AL, I appreciate Lawler’s honesty and candor.

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This gets paid off a little later when Alabama’s own Sparky Plugg, Bob Holly, pins the Intercontinental Champion, Owen Hart. Holly talked about the match in his portion of the Raw Is Owen tribute show:

“The one thing that really sticks out in my mind, what he did for me, was about three years ago we had a show in Mobile, and of course Mobile’s my hometown, and he volunteered to put me over, you know, right in the middle of the ring. And that’s what I really remember most about him.”

It might seem weird to modern fans, but WWE hasn’t always had a weird obsession with burying wrestlers in front of their hometown crowds. I think that started when Jim Ross started pissing them off. They humiliated him in Oklahoma a few times and Vince was like, “wow, this feels good, does anybody else come from a place?”

The Harts (and Lawler) are inconsolable, and they make up for it by finding Holly in the back later in the show and beating him up 4-on-1. One thing I liked about the Hart Foundation as opposed to the New World Order is that more often than not, the Harts would at least wait to see how the match actually ends before running in and ruining it. An nWo guy could be in control for 11 of 11 minutes, but if the opposition pulled off more than one move in a row to start minute 12, 17 guys would hit the ring.

More on the Hart Foundation in a minute.

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Best: Jim Cornette Stays Old School And Maintains The Integrity Of The Business

One of the worst best parts of the episode is that it begins SUNNY’S SEARCH & SOAK MISSION, sponsored by Super Soaker. Imagine the Karate Fighters tournament, if the Karate Fighters were replaced with squirt guns and the hands were replaced with boobs. In retrospect I’m kinda sad that when Sunny started offering mark photos with her in bed she didn’t call it her “search and soak mission.”

Anyway, the joke here is that stuffed-shirt Jim Cornette interrupts Sunny’s day — more on those later, too — with some contracts she’s supposed to sign. If she doesn’t sign them, she’ll be, “all washed up.” In response to the water-themed idiom, Sunny sprays him with a Super Soaker. Corny’s sell of it is a thing of beauty. He looks like a Splicer getting electrocuted in Bioshock.

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After the incident, Sunny assures us that, “wetter is better!” Looking back, I wonder if we can trace Sunny losing her spot in the company to Sable and all the subsequent legal problems she’s had over the past 20 years back to her not signing these contracts in a Super Soaker commercial. “These are so you can keep your job!” “Your contracts are ALL WET!” “I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU BLARRGHHH GURGLE GURGLE”

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Worst: The Cruiserweight Division

You know how hard it is to get into anybody in the cruiserweight division these days when they don’t put effort into giving them characters beyond, “here’s a little guy with a normal name, here’s where he’s from, he loves to have fun!” or, if they’re a heel, “he’s all business!” Last week, WWF tried to convince us that we should get into light heavyweight wrestlers by way of Scott Putski, a bland guy with a bland name who does chinlocks and dropkicks. He pinned Al Snow. This week they try the same thing with Scott Taylor, a bland guy with a bland name who does chinlocks and dropkicks. He pins Al Snow. Hey, if it’s broke, don’t fix it, am I right folks?

Honestly, Taylor and Snow (as Leif Cassidy) have a fine match that ends with a small package. This was a great way to follow up Bob Holly vs. Owen Hart, featuring two smallish guys and also ending with a surprise small package. After the match, Snow gets on the announce table and yells about how he won, which is, again, exactly what happened last week.

Scott Taylor would go on to become one half of a gay panic tag team before transitioning into a breakdancing fan favorite. I can’t tell you how many people that also describes in the world of hip-hop.

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Worst/Best: Vince McMahon Can’t Stop Talking About How Not Racist He Is

During the introductions in the second King of the Ring first round match of the night, Vince McMahon recaps last week’s interaction with Faarooq by saying he, so to speak, played the “race card.” Not to be confused with Bob Holly, who played the race car. Vince is like, “hey, none of us are racist, black people just haven’t been able to get the job done,” which is definitely a believable excuse from a 50-year old North Carolinian wrestling promoter who runs a predetermined fighting league.

Faarooq takes on his future blood rival, Rocky Maivia, and pins him strong in about 2 1/2 minutes with a Dominator. After the match, Crush and Savio Vega try to put the boots to Rocky, and Faarooq surprisingly waves them off. THIS IS A DIANE CHAMBERS SITUATION, FAAROOQ, I KNOW YOU THINK YOU WANT THE CHARISMATIC NEWCOMER TO JOIN YOUR BAR BUT IT’S ONLY GOING GO END IN HEARTACHE.

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If you’re wondering what Ahmed Johnson thinks of all this, he would NEVER agree with Faarooq because Faarooq is a racist, but he also thinks Faarooq has a point and totally agrees with him. But he’s not a racist, because he likes everybody, and everybody likes him. But at the same time, he’s like, “actually Vince, you do hold black people down, but it’s fine.” He promises to be the Hank Aaron of the WWF and become its first black champion, which is not exactly what Hank Aaron did, but I understood the words “Hank” and “Aaron” so I’ll let it slide.

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Best: May 19!

We now enter the “everything else on the show is fake, but this is REAL” portion of the program, with three segments built around the wrestlers’ off-camera lives.

Last week, the Darkman version of Paul Bearer returned to tell the Undertaker that if he doesn’t rejoin him, he’s going to tell everyone Undertaker’s greatest secret. This week, Paul interrupts a Taker promo to reiterate this threat, clarifying that it’s the secret he promised Undertaker he’d never tell as they were watching Taker’s mother and father being lowered into the ground. Spoiler alert, they weren’t buried very deep. Taker goes from, “I AM THE REAPER OF WAYWARD SOULS” or whatever to, “yo, give me a week,” and Bearer obliges.

Somewhere in the Bearer funeral home basement, a seven-foot tall burn victim is having a really bad day.

BEST: Mick Foley

This is also the episode that features part 1 of Mankind’s sit-down interview with Jim Ross, the brilliant, star and image-making segments that turned Mick Foley from a talented but underappreciated mid-carder into a beloved legend. They simply turn the cameras on Mankind and let him talk dramatically about his real-life childhood as an outcast who found out he could deal with physical pain, and chose pro wrestling because it allowed him to do the only thing he knows he’s good at for money. I can’t stress how engaging and revolutionary this was in 1997, before we’d sat with 20 years of Mick Foley being like, “here’s my family, I love amusement parks, I love Santa, RIGHT HERE in whatever city we’re in, thumbs up.” The best parts of Mick were never the likable parts … they were the grotesque, mangled, human parts that made him feel like one of us. I’m not sure they ever totally got that.

But yeah, if you’ve never seen this interview, watch it. Watch it with your mouth kinda hanging open. One of the most beautifully executed things to ever pop up on a wrestling show. Even now I’m watching it like, “aw, Mankind, I hope things get better for you. It’ll be okay.”

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Best: DakotaDust

In the final IRL segment of the night, Goldust accidentally inspires the songwriting of Jakob Dylan by introducing more than one Marlena. He has his daughter, Dakota, dressed like her mom and lets her run around in the ring being a kid for a while before his match with Rockabilly. As a segment it completely falls apart — Dakota doesn’t want to do whatever they’d rehearsed, and just kinda murmurs into the microphone while wandering around in circles, waving at the crowd — but as a look into the adorable and frustrating lives of parents, it’s pretty great. Plus, baby Marlena is adorable.

Less good is the match with Rockabilly, which ends when Goldust hits Honky Tonk Man with his own guitar. Goldust doesn’t even get to win the match that started with him introducing the crowd to his daughter, and most of the commentary is Jerry Lawler calling him a “sissy” for crying in his interview. When he’s not calling Goldust names, he’s going in on a 3-year old. This and the Alabama stuff is pretty funny from a “heel going way too over the top” perspective, but Lawler brings that all crashing down next week and goes so far over the top he goes around and ends up on the very bottom.

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Best: The Unlikely Duo!

This week’s show actually opens with a replay of last week’s missed wheelchair superkick, the post-match brawl, and an in-ring interview in which Stone Cold Steve Austin and Grove Street’s own Shawn Michaels argue about how yeah, sure, they’re helping each other, but they’re not helping each other. They come to blows, and the Hart Foundation (minus Bret) shows up on the TitanTron to run them down for being stupid, in-fighting Americans. They challenge Austin and Michaels to a tag team match next week, and the faces tentatively accept, but don’t want to team with each other.

They spend most of the rest of the episode looking for substitute partners. Michaels goes straight to Ken Shamrock, who is basically cross-eyed future Shawn Michaels crossbred with a pitbull. Austin refuses to put any effort into the partner search because he wants to whip their asses alone, promising to find someone who is “75 pounds or 75 years old.”

His first attempt is the 75-pounder.

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Austin barges into Sable’s locker room, where she’s only wearing hot pants and has an Austin 3:16 shirt draped over her chest. Austin’s like, “hey, you wanna be my partner,” which might not have been a bad idea given how unstoppable Sable became circa WrestleMania 14. Sable’s like, “get out of my dressing room,” so Austin repeatedly butts out and butts back in trying to see her naked. When he realizes he can’t, he yells “JESUS CHRIST” and storms off. I honestly wish he’d tried the same thing with Sunny and had to miss next week’s tag match due to a severe super-soaking.

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Attempt #2 is with the 75-year olds. Austin berates future Women’s Champion (not a joke) Harvey Wippleman into being his partner, but the Brooklyn Brawler shows up enthusiastically trying to take the spot. Austin responds by beating him up and calling him a loser. Brawler gets such PTSD from this incident that the next time they interact 3 1/2 years later, Brawler jumps backwards over a catering table to avoid a handshake. Continuity!

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Back to Michaels. Last week, Bret Hart said he had a big surprise for the crowd, then refused to tell him when they got their America stink on him. This week, he and the Hart Foundation announce that the big surprise is that if Shawn Michaels is returning to the ring at King of the Ring, so’s Bret, and he wants a match with Shawn.

Shawn, having just completed a mission for Ryder, interrupts on the Tron and sweetens the deal. He’ll face Bret Hart at King of the Ring, assuming Bret will agree to have “no excuses” and handcuff a member of the Hart Foundation to each ring post. That still seems like a pretty dumb deal for Shawn, who could’ve suggested, I don’t know, handcuffing them to something far away from where he’s trying to wrestle, but wrestling’s wrestling.

Things are going relatively smoothly until this moment, colloquially known as the point of no return.

The insinuation is that married-ass and on live television Bret Hart had been having an affair with Sunny. As the story goes, it was Shawn who’d been sleeping with Sunny and they’d recently stopped seeing each other, so paranoid Shawn Michaels immediately assumes she’s hooking up with the guy he hates the most. According to Sunny, she was actually hooking up with the Bulldog. Bret vs. Shawn at King of the Ring never happens, of course, and the animosity continues until a backstage fight in Hartford where Bret yanks out a clump of Shawn’s hair and Shawn quits again. He does that a lot. He’d come back quickly, though, and eventually they’d have their match at Survivor Series. Pretty sure that went on without a hitch and nothing remarkable happened.

So.

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After all of this, Stone Cold Steve Austin wrestles Jim Neidhart. After a few minutes Austin goes after Brian Pillman on commentary, and the match ends with another Austin and Michaels vs. the Hart Foundation brawl. Gorilla Monsoon phones somebody from off-screen, and it’s announced that next week, Austin and Michaels WILL team up to face Owen and the Bulldog together. That ends up being one of the best and hottest matches in the thousand-plus episode history of the show.

Raw is creatively nuking Nitro at this point, and if ANY part of the show not involving Austin or a Hart was as good as the parts INVOLVING Austin or a Hart, they’d be pulling off something special. The good news is that they get there, eventually, kind of. The bad news is that most of the actual wrestling never catches up, and by the time they refocus on that, everything else has become a 90-second parody of itself. But that sweet spot gets pretty sweet.

Join us next week for f-bombs, another guy eliminated from the King of the Ring getting back into the King of the Ring, and some “hot days” for the Undertaker.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War: On last week’s eventful episode we got to know “Mickey Foley,” met Goldust’s adorable daughter Dakota, got Triple H back into the King of the Ring tournament via logistical loophole and watched Jerry Lawler go all-in on Alabama.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War for May 26, 1997.

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Best/Worst: Can They oe⭐️is✝

Last week, Owen Hart and the British Bulldog challenged Stone Cold Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels to a Tag Team Championship match, counting on them not being able to coexist. This is based on the fact that despite their personalities, they keep coexisting long enough to fight off the Hart Foundation in group brawls. So Austin and Michaels, convinced they can’t coexist, spend the entirety of Raw looking for substitute tag partners. Michaels finds Ken Shamrock, with whom he can coexist, and Austin finds Harvey Wippleman, who can coexist by standing on the apron and watching him whip some of the aforementioned ass. At the end of the night, Gorilla Monsoon announces that Michaels and Austin will be forced to team together, further pushing the limits of coexistence. Did we mention that they’d have to coexist?

There isn’t a word in the English language that makes Vince McMahon harder than “coexist.” Maybe “thigh muscles,” but that’s technically two words. WWE LOVES a good “can they coexist” story, and they love a bad one even more. This week’s episode opens with Michaels and Austin in the ring again, with Jim Ross asking, “HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY COEXIST?” SOMEBODY TELL ME, I’M ABOUT TO BURST.

Michaels is like, “shut up, Steve! We can coexist!” and Austin just kind of tries to cut a promo independent of Michaels’ interruptions until the Legion of Doom show up, telegraphing the result of the main event by challenging Austin and Michaels for the tag titles “if they get past Owen and the Bulldog.” This isn’t setting up an LOD run-in or foreshadowing anything, they’re just setting up next week’s Raw before this one’s ten minutes old. Vince Russo’s great at making everyone on the show matter and have a goal, but he’s not so great at eyeballing how long a pro wrestling segment should take and when it should happen.

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The Road Warriors stick around to take on Hart Foundation Black and White, aka Brian Pillman and Jim Neidhart. I chose this screenshot because of the Calvin Peeing sign, which is as 1990s as you get before the New Age Outlaws show up and everyone starts drawing wrestlers as South Park characters. I love that (1) Calvin is just peeing on the word “Bret” instead of any representation of him, and (2) the pee isn’t actually touching the name. I hope when they go to Canada, somebody has a sign of Calvin praying to Bret.

Anyway, the Legion of Doom have their very standard WWF match where they turn the selling on and off like a light switch, culminating in them setting up Pillman for a Doomsday Device. The rest of the Hart Foundation runs in for the DQ, which of course brings Austin and Michaels to fight them off. Then, of course, Austin and Michaels come to blows themselves, calling into question — say it with me, folks — whether or not they can coexist later tonight. I bet they definitely won’t!

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Best: We’re Looking At The Real Deal Now

Up next is the Raw in-ring debut of Nation of Domination CPA turned pro wrestler D’Lo Brown, a thinking man’s Attitude Era favorite. This is before he gets his chest protector and loses a bone in his neck that keeps his head from flopping around. He takes on and cleanly defeats Bob Holly, who I guess is doing jack and shit with his victory over Intercontinental Champion Owen Hart last week. Bob Holly’s a regional Samson. Take him out of Alabama and he gets -5 to all attributes.

Anyway, the highlight of the match (besides fond memories of D’Lo) is the color commentary from Faarooq. He’s continuing to subversively be a babyface by pointing out how racist WWE is, calling Vince McMahon on his bullshit to his face. This exchange is particularly telling:

Faarooq: “Let me just ask you something, and tell me if this is the truth. Was there a civil war in this country?”
Vince: “Yes there was, of course.”
Faarooq: “Was there slavery in this country?”
Vince: “Unfortunately, yes.”
Faarooq: “What color were the slaves?”
Vince: [long pause] “… what is the game you’re trying to play here”

That’s every interaction you can have about race on the Internet. “Factual statement, I agree. Factual statement, yes, I agree. Thing that makes me think deeper about the question? ENOUGH WITH YOUR MACHIAVELLIAN RUSE.” Maybe the game Faarooq is trying to play is realizing you can only say “hey, think about other people” to the old white dudes in charge before you have to start kicking and punching them awake. I am interested in engaging in a discussion about race with other wrestling fans!

Okay, maybe not. Maybe we can talk about sexual orientation instead?

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Nope!

Worst: Know Your Audience

First of all, it’s interesting that WWE had a character with “ass” in his name for the better part of a decade and WWE Network censors “ass” as “–,” but doesn’t bleep “flaming fag” and has the closed captioning type it out uncensored. Also, if you think that’s some kind of PewDiePie-style awkward joke from me, here’s the promo in its entirety:

So, here’s the problem I have. A lot of times I get accused of being a PC Thug or a Social Justice Bard or whatever for my opinions on wrestling, and it’s almost always misconstrued. I don’t want the heels to be neutered, you know? Jerry Lawler’s cutting a brutal heel promo here, and out of context, I like it. Heels should be the worst people in the world. They should also be presented in a way that convinces the live crowds to, you know, boo and hate them for being so backwards and shitty about everything. But there’s a problem in wrestling sometimes where heels end up the funniest and most engaging characters on the show, especially compared to babyfaces, who are increasingly produced for mass consumption without any soul or personality. If Daniel Bryan becomes a face, he loses most of what made people like him and starts jabbing heels with baldly written snaps. Chris Jericho goes face and devolves from “the man of 1,004 holds” or “you just made the list,” to, “you’re STUPID! SHUT UP!” Ideally, in a magical type of wrestling world that trust me, I know does not exist, a heel should be the guy doing things that gets him booed, and the crowd should be enlightened or at least aware enough to follow through with that, and maybe want someone to kick his ass for it.

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Instead, here’s what the WWF did. They spent several weeks allowing the audience to get to know the “real” Goldust, Dustin Runnels, and find out that outside of his pansexual gay panic Oscar statue act, he’s a decent but trouble family man who loves his wife and daughter and struggles with trying to make a name for himself in the shadow of his famous father. In his first match back last week, he lost via DQ to Rockabilly. This week, he loses a King of the Ring first round match to Jerry Lawler, an almost 50-year old part-timer and announcer who just slurred the shit out of him, insulted his wife and said he should’ve named his 3-year old daughter “Target” because “everybody had a shot at it.” Oh, and guess where the match takes place? Evansville, Indiana, one of the frequent stops for Lawler’s USWA, meaning he’s over HUGE the entire time and has people thunderously cheering him when he cheats to win. Goldust gets booed for daring to fight The King, and after the match when he gets revenge for the cheating, he gets murmur-booed for it.

And what bums me out is that nothing comes of it. This isn’t the start of a big Lawler vs. Goldust program where the guy has to fight to defend his family from a bigot. Lawler just wins, goes on to compete in the tournament at the pay-per-view and Goldust wrestles … Crush? He also has a two week story between now and then where he wins a #1 contender match for the European Championship somehow and fails to win it. One of those things that probably worked really well on paper, was done with the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time, and never followed up on.

So, Raw.

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Worst: Is Anybody Gonna Call A DQ Tonight?

During the Goldust/Lawler match, Goldust gets thrown to the outside and Lawler follows. Marlena is there, and before Lawler can even threaten her or do anything, she slaps him in the face. The referee is right there staring at it, but doesn’t call for a disqualification. Later, Rocky Maivia has a match against Flash Funk where the Head Bangers show up on commentary and get physically involved in the match, but the referee — who, again, is standing right there staring at it, look at him — doesn’t call a DQ. Rocky recovers enough to hit a high cross-body and wins, and then somehow they’re both mad at the Head Bangers again. What’s going on? Did we decide we were ECW this week and not tell anybody?

In an interesting note, the Head Bangers aren’t there to set up a pay-per-view match against Rocky and Flash or anything. They end up wrestling the all-star squadron of Bart Gunn and Jesse Jammes on the pre-show. No, they’re there to shill KING OF THE RING INFLATABLE CHAIRS. How much would one of those run me, you might ask?

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Oh, I don’t know, how about SEVENTY DOLLARS.

That’s right, folks, Mt. Morris has an Impact Zone-style warehouse full of King of the Ring custom seating infatables and they’ll let you take one off their hands for the low, low 1997 price of $59.99, plus the eleven dollars it takes to get a flat piece of plastic from the peaks of Illinois to your doorstep. Hell, you could get a Hog Wild denim vest for that kind of scratch.

Anyway, Barron Trump wasn’t alive in 1997 and that’s the only little Richie Rich motherfucker I could imagine getting a $70 pay-per-view specific WWF inflatable through the mail.

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Worst: Pre-Generation X

Rockabilly’s incredible non-push continues this week with a loss to Hunter Hearst Helmsley. This is punctuated by Chyna pulling a Jacqueline and body-slamming the Honky Tonk Man on the floor. Honky Tonk is also the victim of Sunny’s Super Soaker search and soak mission this week, so he’s having an especially bad time with the ladies. If Mae Young drags him into a janitor’s closet to make out with her, he’s got a bingo.

So yeah, Hunter Hearst Helmsley defeats Rockabilly. Vince is like, “neither of these men are fan favorites, so to speak!” “So to speak” is becoming my favorite Vince-ism, because it doesn’t mean anything and can mean EVERYTHING. He’s like, “last week Farooq, so to speak, played the race card.” It’s like his “one two THREE HE GOT HIM NEW CHAMPION no he kicked out” as a direct, multipurpose idiom.

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Best: Paul Bearer As An Enraged, Blackmailing, Pus-Covered Ginger

If you thought Paul Bearer was scary as a creepy soprano mortician in charge of a zombie mage via mysterious light-filled urn, hold on to your butts for him as a pissed-off ginger southerner with pus all over his face. He’s promising to reveal the Undertaker’s big secret by the “end of tonight’s program,” and here he is checking his watch during a picture-in-picture from Ahmed Johnson vs. Vader. I’m choosing to talk about Paul Bearer’s facial wounds instead of Ahmed Johnson vs. Vader because Vader’s Kuwaiti news shine is starting to wear off and it’s all downhill from here.

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Jim Ross and Vince McMahon are on commentary, so nobody calls him “Paul Bearer,” it’s always PAW BEAR. But yeah, Paw Bear is now a changed man thanks to the Undertaker throwing a fireball in his face. His powder skin has melted off, fire somehow gave him natural brows and his hair’s red all of a sudden, because that’s how fire works. And I don’t want to hit it too hard, but man, those beige-yellow pus stains on his bandages are pretty much the grossest special effect WWE’s ever produced outside of, like, Boogeyman performing facial surgery on Jillian Hall by peeling off the plastic gag vomit they Scotch-taped to her cheek.

At the end of the night, Paw Bear shows up to tell Undertaker his time is up, and Taker’s like, “THE CREATURES OF THE NIGHT MUST FORGIVE ME FOR WHAT I MUST DO.” Except, you know, slower and more Bible-y. He chokes Paw at first, but ultimately decides keeping the secret secret for another few weeks is worth the sacrifice, and Undertaker poses to show his allegiance.

Don’t change your mind about this later, Undie. And if you do, make sure you’re wrestling a match inside a cage with a locked door. That will probably protect you from whatever 7-foot fire demons you’ve got in your closet.

Best: Dude Love

We continue the sit-down interview with Mankind this week as we’re introduced to Dude Love, Mick’s Shawn Michaels-esque teenage backyard wrestling character. This becomes important later. These are still super great, aside from the fact that the WWF summed up last week’s interview with, “we learned that Mankind likes to eat worms,” which is kind of the opposite of what that interview was about.

by rasslemania

Best: They Can Coexist, And Then They Can’t

The best part of this week’s episode by a mile is the main event, Shawn Michaels returning to the ring after a four-month Loss of Smile to team with Stone Cold Steve Austin against Owen Hart and the British Bulldog. Michaels, Austin and Hart are three of the best to ever do it, and Bulldog is at the top of the list of guys who can be occasionally carried to greatness, so this one’s as good as you could possibly expect a 1997 Raw match to be.

The pace is ridiculously quick, with everyone working overtime to get their shit in. The crowd loves every second of it, because look at the rest of the card they had to sit through tonight, and pop for everything. It’s even refreshing in modern Raw terms, because it’s a great match that doesn’t rely too hard on kickouts to create drama. The Austin/Hart coexistence drama is enough, and they work well enough together that it throws Bulldog and Owen off their gameplan. They rely too much on the expected clashing of egos, and Austin and HBK are able to hold it together long enough to hit a surprise Sweet Chin Music from out of nowhere while the ref’s back is turned and give Austin the pin, and the championships.

After the match, the Hart Foundation jumps Michaels and beats him down. Austin is busy grabbing both tag titles so he doesn’t immediately help, but stops before he leaves and realizes what’s going on. But then, in a great moment of character consistency, the driven-to-nobleness Stone Cold realizes that yeah, he could help out his new tag team partner, but all of the Hart Foundation is in the ring beating him down right now … meaning Bret is by himself at the top of the ramp again. Nothing motivates Austin like Bret Hart standing somewhere alone, so Austin leaves his partner to a stomping to jump and sucker punch Bret a few times. Classic. I appreciate that they always went back to Austin’s psycho-killer obsession with Bret’s existence, and found enough ways to illustrate it and switch everyone’s alignments around it with almost nothing else changing.

Austin flees when the Harts realize what’s happening, and the two men left lying, conveniently enough, are King of the Ring opponents Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.

WWE

Happy Austin 3:16 Day, or as non-wrestling fans know it, “Is it still okay to eat that leftover pie you forgot to put in the fridge” Day. By now, Austin 3:16 is timeless; it was the birth of a whole new era, and an important cog in the gears of the Monday Night Wars. Stone Cold Steve Austin cut the following promo on Jake The Snake Roberts after winning the King of the Ring tournament in 1996:

The first thing I want to be done is to get that piece of crap out of my ring. Don’t just get him out of the ring—get him out of the WWF. Because I proved, son, without a shadow of a doubt, you ain’t got what it takes anymore. You sit there and you thump your Bible and you say your prayers and it didn’t get you anywhere. Talk about your Psalms, talk about John 3:16 — Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass. All he’s gotta do is go buy him a cheap bottle of Thunderbird and try to get back some of that courage he had in his prime.

As the King of the Ring, I’m serving notice to everyone of the WWF Superstars—I don’t give a damn what they are—they’re all on the list and that’s Stone Cold’s list and I’m fixin’ to start running through all of ‘em. Piss off. As far as this championship match is considered, son, I don’t give a damn if it’s Davey Boy Smith or Shawn Michael- — Steve Austin’s time has come. And when I get the shot, you’re looking at the next WWF Champion, and that’s the bottom line ‘cause Stone Cold said so.

For the tl;dr crowd (or “too long; didn’t memorize”), you can also watch the entire thing on the WWE Network, or, should you feel more inclined, this reversed YouTube version that seems to be the most accessible:

To celebrate, let’s take a look back at the origins and aftermath of one of the most iconic phrases in pro wrestling history.

Via WWE

1. No Michael P.S. Hayes, No Austin 3:16

Now, this falls squarely in the wheelhouse of people who will inevitably respond with “what the heck, of course we know that. Earlier today I saw someone say they didn’t remember King of the Ring 1996 because it happened before they were born. After taking a personal moment to remember that I’m nine days away from turning 30 and then taking some deep breaths into a paper bag, I figured the actual origins would be a good place to start.

Initially, Steve Austin was never supposed to compete in King of the Ring. In what’s described as some “disciplinary measures,” Austin was put into the tournament as a last-minute decision. It’s said that Austin’s push was supposedly meant for Triple H, which is a real shame. That guy can never catch a break, huh. Any cursory knowledge of Austin’s career will tell you that he was the best at taking the meager opportunities handed to him and spinning them into some of the most memorable and beloved character work of his career. This was no exception.

During his first match of the night, Austin got kicked in the mouth by Marc Mero so hard he had to be taken to the hospital. 14 stitches later, Austin arrived back at the show after Jake the Snake Roberts had already cut his promo for their match set for later in the evening. Michael P.S. Hayes – former Freebird, Badstreet occupant, and then ring announcer under the name Dok Hendrix – told Austin about the promo, letting him know that he was to wrestle Roberts for the title of King of the Ring, and that he had cut a religious-based promo on Austin. Now, this timeline does gets a little squicky: in Austin’s book, it’s intimated that he found out before going to the hospital, but in later interviews and retrospectives it’s said that he found out he was going to go over in the final after coming back. Either way, without that conversation with Hayes, the idea to respond in kind would have never been born.

2. To Take It Even Further – No Rainbow Man, No Austin 3:16

Again, speaking to those of A Certain Age, it wasn’t uncommon to see JOHN 3:16 signs in the crowds at sporting events, or really anyplace someone could possibly be noticed holding up a sign. The pervasive Biblical passage is described as God’s word in a nutshell: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” You can find that inscribed on the bottom of retail chain Forever 21’s bags, or printed on the underside of In-N-Out Burger cups. It’s a way to advertise faith-based beliefs without being overly proactive and in-your-face.

From the late Seventies to the early Nineties, a man named Rollen Stewart would attend various sporting events, donning a multicoloured clown wig and brandishing a JOHN 3:16 sign. For three years he was simply The Rainbow Man, but after the 1980 Super Bowl he was inspired by a televangelist to become a Born Again Christian, and integrate the bible passage into his “act.” From then on he would put himself in view behind home plate at MLB games, between goal posts at NFL games, even going so far as holding a sign up behind Jack Nicklaus at the Masters. One man’s crazy is another’s pop-culture phenomenon, and the trend of holding up the signs extended far beyond the lone act of a guy who loved Jesus and clown wigs.

Steve Austin said that it was the first thing that came into his mind, given that he had often seen signs of the scripture held up at football games. Were it not for Rollen Stewart and his effect on sports culture, Steve Austin may not have had the effect on pro wrestling that he did.

That said, it’s important to note that Stewart is currently serving three life terms in California for locking himself in a Los Angeles hotel during an eight-hour standoff with police/SWAT, holding a maid hostage, and threatening to shoot down airplanes as they took off and landed at nearby LAX. So, y’know…maybe think twice about trying to become the next Brock Lesnar Guy.

Via WWE

3. Vince McMahon Didn’t Believe In Stone Cold

Austin 3:16 was the catchphrase, Stone Cold Steve Austin was the character. King of the Ring 1996 was the birth of a new Steve Austin. The King of the Ring promo was entirely unscripted, and not even Vince McMahon knew what was going to come out of his mouth. His promo signaled a sea change in wrestling, some even crediting this as the exact moment the Attitude Era began. But change is hard, and what seems like such a simple part of history was still something that had to be fought for.

After King of the Ring, Austin found himself with more popularity and much more screentime. He had liked the way Bruce Willis wore his hair in Pulp Fiction, frustrated with the similar thinning of his hairline, so he got a buzz cut. Then he saw Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers, and decided to go completely smooth. He grew out his facial hair, and started to feel as “Stone Cold” as he looked. His promos got meaner, really cutting into wrestlers, but then he noticed that the brunt of what he said was being edited out. From his book The Stone Cold Truth:

We were in a real snowy town in the northeast, at the old building in Lowell, Massachusetts, and I called Vince aside. I said, “Vince, can I talk to you?”

He said, “Yeah.”

I said, “Man, what’s going on? It seems like every time I say something, y’all take it back to the shop and chop all my stuff out.”

He said, “Well, Steve, your stuff is making the people laugh back in the studio. We are concerned because, as a heel, we want the fans to not like you.”

An impassioned argument followed, with Austin pointing out that, compared to others in the then-WWF, his personality was all he had. After that, Vince started to let go more, and we were given the Stone Cold Steve Austin we know today.

Austin has always been a proponent for wrestlers to stand up to creative, and fight for themselves and their characters. We know that this does not always work, and we seem to be in a period of time where that fear of the new overrides any chance at innovation or change within WWE. While the Attitude Era is either what brought people in (or drove them out, depending on how much you liked being marginalized), one of the greatest things about it was that willingness to let someone be the anti-hero. Cartoonish standards of black and white, heel-face dynamics are great and play a key role in wrestling of any time period, but those shades of gray are what really made characters shine. In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that calling someone the “Shitman” could be such an important factor in changing the face of wrestling forever, but hey, the Nineties were a wild time. I mean jeez, remember how popular the Spin Doctors were?

I really hope you do so I don’t have to get that paper bag out again.

Getty Image

3.16: Eventually, It All Came Back Together

Okay, so maybe this is technically #4, but “Four Things About” something or other doesn’t sound anywhere near as catchy, and I guess, you know, it’s 3.16 because Stone Cold said so. Ha! I bet you thought you could go this whole list without a hackneyed quip like that! Well, you’re wrong, and I am never above hackneyed quips.

Back in 2010, the NCAA sent four rule changes down the pipe. The most minor one, however, was the one that caused the most fuss. Tim Tebow – Heisman winner, famous kneeler – had written 11 different bible verses on his eye black during game day, most recognizably John 3:16. The rule against messages in eye black fueled the debate about the place of religious freedom in sport, one that I’m not even going to begin to get into because hey, I just wanna write about an angry bald dude here. Let’s just say it was polarizing to a degree that is well above my pay-grade.

Tim Tebow and his faith were inextricable, but it was a January 2012 NFL game that solidified the link between him and the passage from John. At that point, Tebow was playing for the Denver Broncos. That Sunday he threw for 316 passing yards, his ten completions averaging 31.6 yards a piece. Tebow had often said that John 3:16 was his favorite scripture, and much like Austin, the scripture and this game helped launch him into the pop culture stratosphere.

Afterwards, Steve Austin said that if Tebow could throw for another 316 yards against the New England Patriots, “3:16” would belong to him:

I first started following Tebow’s career when he was a Florida Gator – not because of him, and hell, not even because of the Gators, but because I was a fan of then-Florida coach Urban Meyer. Because of that I witnessed Tebow’s phenomenal collegiate career. Now he’s a pro, and sure he’s having a great run right now, but it’s a whole new season next year. We’ll see how it plays out and if he’s even starting. I’m no football analyst or a real religious person, but I think he’s a great role model for young kids and I wish him the best. So yeah, if he can throw for another 316 yards and beat the New England Patriots, the “3:16” is all his. – WWE.com

Tebowmania is no longer running wild, but Austin 3:16 endures. From my middle-school teachers wondering who this Stone Cold fellow was who set the bottom line against doing homework, to the Austin 3:16 shirts remaining the best-selling merchandise in all of WWE/WWF history, to the fact that we’re still writing about it a year shy of its 20th anniversary, the effect is undeniable. And who could sum it up better than Austin himself from that same interview?

“Austin 3:16 says I just whooped your ass” was prophetic, and it became a phrase that defined my career. It is still one of the most popular phrases in WWE history, and anyone who doesn’t like it can piss off.

This is an updated version of a post that originally ran on March 16, 2015

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Sid returned, but it’s less important than Sunny outsmarting the Honky Tonk Man and Jim Cornette by spraying both of them AND both Headbangers with a Super Soaker that shoots in three different directions.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here, but make sure you’ve seen King of the Ring 1997 first.. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows.

Up first, let’s take a look at WWE’s most popular tournament for a meaningless title and, if you’re lucky, a low-quality Halloween costume.

WWE Network

Before We Begin

Here’s what you need to know about King of the Ring 1997, also known as, “the one after the important one, but before Billy Gunn ruined it.”

WWE Network

Hunter Hearst Helmsley Is Your King Of Kings Of The Ring

His inner monologue in that picture is like, “this is nice, but can we attach a skull mask to it?”

Hunter Hearst Helmsley, the man who was originally eliminated in round one and only got back into the tournament because Ken Shamrock shoot broke Vader’s nose, wins the King of the Ring tournament because Vader’s still got heat from Kuwait, Mankind’s accidentally getting over as a face and Ahmed Johnson mentioned the reason there haven’t been any black World Champions in a promo about how he doesn’t care that there have been no black World Champions. Triple H loves a tournament where the winner is just the guy who fucks up the least.

He defeats Mankind with a Pedigree after Chyna smashes the King of the Ring ceremonial scepter cross Foley’s back. After the match, H continues to beat Foley down with the crown. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t take off the cape and try to choke him with it. This is technically the beginning of the lifelong, one-sided Triple H vs. Mick Foley feud that’s still happening on Raw in 2017. So, settle in, I guess.

WWE Network

Stone Cold Steve Austin And Shawn Michaels Cannot Coexist

You’re probably wondering why there are three referees in that picture. This match is great, because of course it is, but like most of Shawn’s marquee matches from 1995-1997, it’s only great until the finish. That guy did not like being pinned.

In this one, Austin has Michaels pinned after a stunner, but the referee is down. Austin revives the referee and stuns him again, because that’s how he rolls. Michaels recovers and hits Sweet Chin Music on Austin, so a second referee runs down and … checks on the first referee. Michaels superkicks him. Michaels manages to revive the first referee again, but Austin kicks out at two. That brings out Earl Hebner, who disqualifies both men and throws out the match to the enjoyment of nobody. After the match, Austin and Michaels try to cheap shot each other with their respective Tag Team Championship belts, but referees four and five show up to back up Earl and send everyone to the back.

I wish I’d been in the room when Shawn was like, “hang on, hear me out on this … five referees.”

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for June 9, 1997.

WWE Network

Brazzers

Best: A Nation Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

This week’s most important development is the breakup of the original version of the Nation of Domination. This was necessary because:

• Crush and Savio Vega were garbage
• WWE was on the cusp of a wrestling faction race war and needed to make its black militant separatist group, you know, actually black
• the Nation running in to ruin every match like the poorest man’s nWo was already tired and old the second time they did it
• Ahmed Johnson needed to look as stupid as possible

At King of the Ring, Faarooq is doing pretty well in his WWF Championship challenge against the Undertaker until, you guessed it, Savio Vega and Crush start arguing at ringside. Undertaker sits up, scoops Faarooq upside down and crotch-faces him into the canvas for the 1-2-3.

Raw opens with a trios match, pitting the Nation against Ahmed Johnson and the Legion of Doom. Faarooq is doing pretty well until, you guessed it, Savio Vega and Crush start arguing. They try to save him on the outside, end up knocking themselves and him out, and angrily leave Faarooq to get destroyed 3-on-1 for the loss. After the match, only D’Lo Brown sticks around to help Faarooq to the back. This becomes important a little later.

Here’s a shot of Dok Hendrix trying to get into the Nation’s locker room to tell them how much blacker he is than them:

WWE Network

The backstage argument escalates until Faarooq storms back to the ring to make an important announcement: Savio Vega is fired, Crush is fired, Clarence Mason is fired, all the nameless henchmen are fired, and the Nation of Domination is now just him and D’Lo Brown. See what happens when you’re nice to people, and don’t accidentally Heart Punch them in the face?

WWE Network

Faarooq promises that we’ll see a “New Nation,” formed under him, and he challenges the two people he hates the most — Ahmed Johnson and the Undertaker — to a tag team match next week. That match ends up adding two new members to the crew, instantly improving the group and keeping it afloat until the August, when a bad rookie gets a live mic and becomes the most electrifying man in sports-entertainment.

Note: Clarence Mason and Ahmed Johnson end up in WCW feuding with Members of Harlem Heat about which letter they can and can’t use in their names, so we all probably should’ve been listening to Faarooq.

Worst: Social Media!

You know that crawl that runs at the bottom of WWE live shows, with tweets from @FoolUsTwiceSheamus or whoever that are like, “can’t wait to see what The Authority does to Seth Rollins in tonight’s main event #raw #redesignrebuildreclaim #thegame” or whatever? Here’s the original version of that; heavy praise for King of the Ring 1997 from AOL users such as “ILuvHB” and “LI Hitman.”

WWE Network

Vince McMahon reads them and is like, “WOW! HERE YOU GO, LOOK AT THIS!” Indeed, ladies and jenna-men.

WWE Network

Worst: Extremely Complacent Watchers

Paul E. Dangerously and Tommy Dreamer show up in the crowd, using the famous 1990s wrestling trope “they bought a ticket so they’re allowed to be at ringside,” so they’ll be there for Rob Van Dam’s appearance. You see, a huge brawl involving Jerry Lawler broke out at the ECW Arena a couple of days earlier, so Paul and Dreamer are here not only to confront Van Dam, but to tell him he’s “sold his soul.”

The only problem is that they show up a match early, so they have to sit through Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon versus the Headbangers. I’m surprised that shit didn’t immediately put them in a coma and carried out of the arena by EMTs. Furnas and LaFon are doing WWE’s favorite gimmick, Boring Guys, so they enter to no music, the announce team buries them the entire time, they demand to be called “the most exciting team in the World Wrestling Federation,” and they lose to THE HEADBANGERS when one of them accidentally splashes the other. The only way I’d give this a Best is if “accidental splashing” was somehow a callback to Mosh and Thrasher’s Super Soaker commercial. MINUS FIVE STARS.

WWE Network

Eyes up here, Tim White

So!

Rob Van Dam eventually does show up to face Flash Funk, and Paul and Tommy are irate. I think the weirdest part of all of this is that the ECW guys are pointing at Rob like, YOU SOLD YOUR SOUL, YOU SOLD YOUR SOUL, and Jerry Lawler’s on commentary talking about how WWF stars are superior and Rob Van Dam’s the only talent ECW ever had, and Rob’s fucking opponent is Too Cold Scorpio. Scorp’s just like, ♪ whistle and walk away ♪

Van Dam wins with a split-legged moonsault, and the ECW guys jump the rail to attack him and Lawler. The one part of this I really liked is that Heyman keeps trying to like, charge into Jerry Lawler and knock him down, but every time he does, Lawler just flips him and punches him in the face. Jim Ross has to be like, “Paul E. Dangerously is NO ATHLETE.” Flash Funk vanishes, because was he ever truly there at all?

WWE Network

Worst: The Gunns Explode

The last time former Tag Team Champions Billy Gunn and Bart Gunn squared off, Bart almost killed Billy with a stun gun. The move, not the device. Fast forward six months and now Billy Gunn is “Rockabilly,” a Honky Tonk Man that can neither sing nor dance, but not even in that funny heel way where it’s supposed to be the point. He just sucks at everything. He pins Bart with a swinging neckbreaker for what I believe is the first actual Rockabilly win without Honky hitting someone with a hair-loom guitar or getting bodyslammed by children or whatever on the outside.

WWE Network

Best: ALL YOUR STUPID RUUUUUULES

Hunter Hearst Helmsley didn’t have an “Austin 3:16” moment during his King of the Ring coronation, but the Raw after King of the Ring features him instantly becoming the Triple H was all know and occasionally love and most of the time tolerate by getting in Vince McMahon’s face about politics, and how he didn’t get a shot until now because politics, and how he’s never letting politics stop him again. He says the ring is his house, and we won’t know exactly how true that is until NXT blows up in around 2014 and we see our fiftieth or sixtieth Proud Papa mark photo of him backstage pointing at a new champion. Somewhere at home, a 21-year old Stephanie McMahon is like, “hey, now THIS is something I could get into!”

Mankind interrupts him on the TitanTron to a surprisingly ample pop, because those Behind the Mask Mick Foley interviews were seriously some of the best clips WWE ever put together. Actually, let me talk about that for a sec.

This week features the final installment of that interview, which ends with Foley getting mad about Jim Ross’ line of questioning and choking him out with a Mandible Claw. Ross’ hilarious gurgling noises still make me laugh twenty years later. Dude sounds like a giant fish that got beached only to realize he’s magical and can breathe air. HAAAAUGHHK!

Anyway, what’s interesting about the Foley clips in retrospect is that they end with that beatdown. Parts one through three either inadvertently or very deliberately turned Mankind face, but part four is built around what for all intents and purposes is a heel act. So you’ve got to wonder how intentional the fan response to these was, or if it was just lightning in a bottle and someone worked above their pay grade.

So yeah, Mankind interrupts Hunter on the Tron, and Chyna (in her first speaking role on Raw) tells Mankind to come down here and kiss her ass. Mankind drops the classic line, “It’s your lucky day, because I’m a good kisser,” but walks slash rolls into a beatdown. More on that in a moment.

WWE Network

Best: Tying Everything Together, Or
Best: “Commode”

The thing that makes these 1997 Raws so good is how much work went into tying each episodes stories together to form a cohesive, “bottle” narrative. Stone Cold Steve Austin was originally scheduled to face Brian Pillman at King of the Ring, but that got messed up thanks to some injuries and/or a comment on the weather, so Austin faced Michaels and got his Pillman match on Raw.

At King of the Ring, Austin interrupted a backstage promo from Pillman, beat him up and stuffed his head in a toilet. On Raw, he refers to the toilet as a “commode,” which is the most true southerner thing Austin’s said since calling dude a “Judas priest.” My grandma called the toilet a commode. Technically a commode is a piece of furniture containing a concealed chamber pot, so it’s like an ass-first trip to Narnia. Modern commodes are those spider shitters that are like, old people walkers with toilets in the middle. I swear, if he’d referred to poop as “hack” he would’ve just BEEN my grandma.

But yeah, Pillman vs. Austin is the night’s advertised main event. Remember: the WWF would NEVER bait and switch you like WCW.

WWE Network

Early in the night, Goldust gets a European Championship match against the champion, the British Bulldog. Goldust is in a weird place here, because when he was a predatory gay panic Oscar statue he won a lot of matches, but now that he’s a down-home family man in colorful paint, he can’t win anything. Dude got slurred and pinned by Jerry Lawler, who in the WWF Universe is like one step above “aggressive fan.”

Bulldog vs. Goldust ends in a double count-out, which referee Tim White clearly wanted to happen. They roll outside of the ring, and before they’re on their feet he’s at like, seven. They’re doing some floor punching, nothing really out of the ordinary, and White’s like, ONETWOTHREEFOURTEN YOU’RE OUT RING THE BELL. He’s playing One Two Three Red Light with them or something. Marlena throws hands at Bulldog a few times, which leads to him standing over her with a chair, threatening to hit her. Before that can happen, the World’s Most Dangerous Samaritan Ken Shamrock hits the ring, suplexes Bulldog and MIXED-MARTIALLY stands him off.

WWE Network

Shamrock returns later to once again even the odds, suplexing Jim Neidhart to keep him from interfering in a Sid vs. Owen Hart non-title match. The interference interference distracts Owen long enough for Sid to chokeslam him and pin him, giving Sid not only the beloved non-title victory, but (if I’m remembering correctly) his last meaningful match on Raw until 2012.

WWE Network

When it’s time for Pillman vs. Austin, the Hart Foundation pays Austin back for the swirlie and jumps him from behind. They beat him down 4-on-1 until Mankind of all people shows up, dragging Pillman into the ring. With Austin incapacitated and at least ONE of the scheduled participants doing wrestling things in the ring, they just roll with Pillman vs. Mankind as the main event. Sure!

And, of course, the Harts run back down and jump Mankind when he grabs Pillman in a Mandible Claw. A post-match melee breaks out, and Austin starts hobbling back down to the ring … only to be passed by a sprinting Ken Shamrock, who is EXTREMELY INTO suplexing Hart Foundation guys right now. Austin and Shamrock manage to run off the Foundation, and if you’ve ever seen Stone Cold Steve Austin do anything ever, you know what’s next.

WWE Network

Austin makes sure to give Mankind the finger on his way out, because DTA.

This is all building to Canadian Stampede, by the way, a 10-man tag legendary almost exclusively for how hot the crowd is. It’s amazing what you can do when your character motivations make sense, your talent is engaged and enthusiastic and you don’t ignore what the crowd’s trying to tell you. Keep that in mind was you watch WrestleMania this year.

WWE Network

Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Connecticut blueblood Hunter Hearst Helmsley won the 1997 King of the Ring and decided he was suddenly really into politics and what goes on backstage. Also, Faarooq disbanded the Nation of Domination, promising we’d see the induction of two new members next week.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Siren Emoji: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for June 16, 1997.

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Bret Screwed Bret: Prologue

The most important news from this week’s show is that Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart have gotten into a real-life backstage fight, causing multiple injuries, a walk-out, new contract negotiations and all the important building blocks in the foundation of the Montreal Screwjob.

As you might recall, Bret and Shawn have been work-shooting on each other for months now, including promos in which Michaels said he’d seen Bret Hart on the road and that he was “no role model,” and the infamous Sunny Days promo about how married Bret Hart was hooking up with Sunny. Things came to a head before last week’s show and a fight broke out.

Here’s the writeup from the June 16, 1997, edition of the Observer, in case you’d like the perspective of someone who wasn’t still in school, furiously refreshing AOL Keyword Wrestling or whatever as this was happening.

Apparently the problems escalated before the show on 6/9 as both were meeting in long personal conversations with Vince McMahon, to the point that McMahon was having little time to converse with anyone else regarding details and attention to the ensuing live television show. Hart wound up going into Michaels dressing room and the two began arguing. There were eye witnesses to this which basically said they argued and started fighting, and it was rather quickly broken up. Most versions have it that Hart was screaming about how Michaels comments affected his personal life and he crossed the line and that Michaels was a smart-ass back. The two went at it, with most versions having it that Hart started it but that Michaels was every bit as guilty in precipitating it. It was believed to have been a one-sided short tussle which resulted in a few punches thrown and a large clump of Michaels’ hair being pulled out of his head to the point it was described that Michaels was given a major bald spot. Michaels face was all puffed up from the punches and he was bleeding from the elbow, apparently from being thrown on the floor. Hart apparently aggravated his recently repaired knee, but none of the injuries were serious. Agents Jerry Brisco and Pat Patterson and some other wrestlers quickly broke it up with Hart on top of Michaels pounding on him, and Brisco and Hart argued loudly back-and-forth in another room for a long time before Hart finally left the arena at about 8:30 p.m. without appearing on the television show. Michaels was blown up from the fight and a little worse for wear, but not injured to the point he couldn’t have appeared on the television show …

Michaels was going crazy after the predicament and said that he would never work against anyone in the Hart Foundation because he couldn’t trust them. He ended up walking out of the building claiming that he couldn’t work or stay in this kind of an environment just before the show was scheduled to go on the air at 7:57 p.m.

Other performers claim as he left the building that he was screaming about how he was quitting and that if he could make it to Boston (where Nitro was being done live) on time he’d just as soon go there. At that point the entire television show had to be scrapped and a new show put together literally minutes before it went on the air.

The kayfabe consequences are:

• Bret Hart suffered injuries to his knee and will miss a few days
• Shawn Michaels suffered a knee injury and a neck injury that will keep him at home feeling sorry for himself for 4-6 weeks
• Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin have been stripped of the WWF Tag Team Championship, and a tournament will be held with the winners facing Stone Cold and a partner of his choosing, who “we hope” will be Shawn Michaels
• Vince McMahon: “Unprofessional conduct by both individuals, but unquestionably from what we understand, Bret Hart clearly the aggressor.”

Michaels was supposed to face Pillman after the pull-apart last week, but he bailed, so Mankind got the spot. That continues this week, with Stone Cold showing up to declare he doesn’t need a tag team partner and, you guessed it, Mankind getting that spot.

WWE Network

Best: Back That Ass Up

Things get deeply sexual when Austin says he never asked for Shawn Michaels long hair and ass-shaking, and Mankind responds by saying he’s already got long hair and can shake his ass. “I’ve got a nice ass!” Austin’s response: “You’ve got a nice big fat ass!” It’s supposed to be an insult, but the crowd is silent, and in 2017 I’m like, “well all right Mick, turn around, let’s see it.” Frank the Clown starts hearing ‘The Sound of Silence’ in his head.

Ken Shamrock shows up unhappy about being stunned last week, and says he wants Austin. Austin says that once he’s done beating up Pillman, he’ll beat up Shamrock. We don’t quite get to that point, but we’ll get there in a minute.

Worst: The Tag Team Tournament

Because it fills a lot more TV than just saying, “Owen and the Bulldog get another shot.”

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Up first is, surprise, Owen Hart and the British Bulldog vs. the least threatening team in wrestling history, The New Blackjacks. Look at those guys. They look like cardboard pop-ups you’d shoot in a cowboy arcade game. James Ellsworth and Carmella look tougher than the New Blackjacks. At this point in his career, Barry Windham straight-up looks like somebody’s Aunt in a novelty mustache.

Unsurprisingly, Owen and Bulldog win thanks to Blackjacks miscommunication. They tease a breakup, because God knows everyone tuning in is dying to see what happens to the New Blackjacks. This is a landmark show for breakups of tag teams you were never interested in seeing in the first place. I’m surprised Doug Furnas didn’t superkick Phil LaFon and throw him through the window of a Methadone Clinic.

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First-round match-up number two is The Headbangers vs. Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler and Rob Van Dam, who are disappointingly not referred to as “High Court.” The story here is that Lawler is still needling the Extreme Championship Wrestling roster, so they show up and get their drunk abusive dad friend The Sandman to jam a Singapore cane up Lawler’s ass and aggressively pull it out. The Headbangers win via … fatality, I guess?

You’ve got to wonder why this is the idea they had for an ECW vs. WWF crossover. To Paul Heyman it was probably, “my guys get on TV and we get tons of national exposure,” but to most ECW fans it felt like, “WWF’s color commentator can beat the shit out of us unless we team up and attack him from behind.” But I get it. If I’m running Local Championship Wrestling and Vince McMahon is like, “hey, we’re gonna let Braun Strowman beat up your top four stars at once but we’ll say ‘Local Championship Wrestling’ ten times,” I’d take it. But I might negotiate up to, “one of our guys gets to put a stick in Braun’s ass.”

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Best/Worst: It’s A Shoot, Brother!

Speaking of ECW, Paul Heyman hangs out on color commentary for an “inter-promotional match” between ECW and Jerry Jarrett’s USWA, possibly as an homage to the last time they did an angle with an indie company. The match is between former Chris Candido, formerly WWF’s “Skip” of the Bodydonnas, and Brian Christopher, future sexy grand-master. Sunny is the ring announcer as an exaggerated wink wink nudge nudge to anyone paying attention.

The point of the match, honestly, is to have Paul E. Dangerously scream “shoot” comments into the microphone as loudly and aggressively as possible while the rest of the announce team responds with WILL YOU STOP? The talking point for Candido is that he left WWF to become a big star in ECW, where he wouldn’t need a dumb gimmick. The Christopher discussion, as you might’ve guessed, is about how he’s (gasp) Jerry Lawler’s son. This brings Lawler out of the back, and another brawl ensues.

In 2017 this is all pretty transparent, but in 1997 it was a massive shakeup and change to the status quo, so it’s worth watching with that mindset. There are few matches that have ever been as low-stakes as Brian Christopher vs. Chris Candido, though, so we aren’t exactly talking about respecting booker-men over here.

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Worst: Support Local Farmers

And speaking of breakups of tag teams you were never interested in seeing in the first place, The Godwinns are breaking up! Somewhere there’s a talking pig whimpering, “say it ain’t so,” while a helpful spider writes “learn how to work” in a web.

But yeah, Hunter Hearst Helmsley defeats dread rival Phineas I. Godwinn with a pedigree after Godwinn stops wrestling him mid-move to grab and french Chyna. That loss brings out Henry Godwinn, still angry from having his neck broken by the Legion of Doom, to get in Phineas’ face and push him around. It’s like when Seth Rollins turned on The Shield for the pig-fucker set.

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Worst: WWF Cruiserweights

This week’s attempt at “light heavyweight action” is one guy from the Fantastics vs. the other guy from the Fantastics. I’m not kidding. Tommy Rogers is the guy on the left who looks like Brad Armstrong from another dimension. Bobby Fulton is the guy on the right in the classic Zack Ryder tights. The only way that look’s ever going to work is if you wrestle as THUNDERTHIGH, slap your clothed leg to pretend you’re loading it with something, then hit people with a loaded leg lariat. And even then it’ll only catch on if you’re able to travel time and do it in the south in 1981.

If you’re not familiar with the Fantastics and want to know how this match goes, imagine if Raw in 2017 was like, “cruiserweight action is up next,” and the match was Sylvan Grenier vs. Renee Dupree. And all they did was chinlocks and dropkicks. Maybe a sunset flip. Maybe.

Best: Canadian Stampede!

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Before we get too deep into how this all connects, I want to give a supplemental Worst to Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart for losing to a punch. The match is Goldust vs. Anvil, with the British Bulldog showing up again to harass Marlena for putting her hands on him last week. In the ring, Goldust hits that sliding punch he does and … wins the match. Anvil lost to the MILDLY SURPRISING PUNCH.

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Anyway, we finally get the Brian Pillman vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin match we’ve been waiting for for like seven months, at least since Austin broke into Pillman’s home and almost got murdered with a handgun. It follows the absurd stipulation from the proposed Michaels/Hart match at King of the Ring by having all four members of the Hart Foundation handcuffed to ringside, which technically makes things way worse for Austin. Handcuff them in the back, or handcuff them to each other in the back of a van in the parking lot or something. Don’t handcuff four dudes to four corners of where you’re supposed to be wrestling so you get attacked 2-on-1 every time you venture two feet from the center of the ring.

The match is a fun brawl, but Pillman’s clearly not where he wants to be physically and can’t really hang anymore. Austin more than makes up for it, though, because Owen hasn’t broken his neck yet and he’s still stuck somewhere between popular brawler and technical wizard. The match ends when Austin stuns a referee, Owen digs a handcuffs key out of the dead ref’s pocket and breaks free to cause a disqualification. That causes another 4-on-1 beatdown until Goldust, Ken Shamrock and the Legion of Doom run down to even the score and run them off.

Austin and Shamrock decide to be uneasy allies, for now, and we’re officially set for the 10-man tag that will blow the roof off the Saddledome and five other nearby buildings at Canadian Stampede.

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Best: We Are The (Actual) Nation, Of (Actual) Domination

This week’s main event is Ahmed Johnson and The Undertaker versus Faarooq and a mystery partner, with the promise that Faarooq is planning to debut not one, but two new members of the Nation. The first is revealed via surprise attack during the ring introductions as Kama Mustafa: supreme fighting machine, former multiple-character rival of the Undertaker and future Hall of Famer The Godfather. Longtime fans may remember when Kama stole the Undertaker’s urn and melted it down to make a gold chain. Taker always had a soft spot for Charles Wright, and loses to him here, CLEANLY, after a Rock Bottom.

Speaking of Rock Bottoms, I think the idea was that you’d assume Rocky Maivia was the second new member of the Nation of Domination. Faarooq had shown mercy to Rocky in previous weeks and had even ordered Savio Vega and Crush to stop beating him up. And yeah, Rocky would eventually find his way onto the squad, but tonight’s Raw features a Very Special Swerve:

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If you can’t beat them, join them, or as Ahmed Johnson might say, “cain bettamajusJOHNem.” Ahmed fends off a post-match attack from the Nation only to Pearl River Plunge Taker himself and join the team he’s spent the past year-plus trying to destroy. I guess Faarooq’s comments about why there’s never been a black World Wrestling Federation champion finally got to him.

And you know what? This could’ve been really great if Ahmed could wrestle more than a few weeks at a time without the dam that is his heart bursting and his limbs falling off. Ahmed ends up injured, again, before Canadian Stampede and has to be replaced on the card. Then he’s out for another year, and when he returns, the Nation turns on him. Because of course they do. BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DO.

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Meanwhile, Rocky Johnson’s kid is in the back watching on the monitor thinking, “I could probably come up with something better. I should start working on my catchphrases.”

The Rock and Triple H have careers that are indelibly linked. Their respective rises to the top of wrestling paralleled one another and they faced each other every step of the way. One thing that was evident throughout their years of feuding was that Triple H and The Rock didn’t particularly care for one another behind the scenes. Their rivalry fueled by competitiveness — and possibly jealousy — created dynamic and tense moments in the ring and out. So let’s break down the stages of their feuds and how they sometimes got realer than wrestling.

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You might not know this about WWE Hall of Famer Barry Windham, but he was born on the Fourth of July. It’s true! This year, Windham turns 57 years old, and his 20-year-plus pro wrestling career was a great one, especially if you happened to be a WCW or NWA fan growing up.

Widely regarded to be one of the most underrated performers of all time, and an integral part of the consensus “best” iteration of the Four Horsemen, Windham is a second generation wrestler, being the son of Hall of Famer Blackjack Mulligan. He also happens to be the uncle of current WWE Superstars Bo Dallas and Bray Wyatt, the latter of whom’s given first name is “Windham,” in honor of Barry.

ALSO in honor of Barry, here is a brief recap of his most memorable career highlights. Happy birthday, Widowmaker.

The U.S. Express captures the gold for the first time

Remember a couple of paragraphs ago, when I was talking about Bo Dallas and Bray Wyatt? They’re the sons of Mike Rotunda, perhaps best known as Irwin R. Schyster. Windham and Rotunda have been best friends throughout their wrestling careers, and Windham married Rotunda’s sister, so … you know … they’re family.

They also had their first major success in the world of pro wrestling together, working together as a tag team in the Florida territories before being signed together by WWF in 1984 as babyface tag team the U.S. Express. They gained popularity quickly, through a combination of talent, a great mouthpiece of a manager in “Captain” Lou Albano, and the can’t-miss entrance theme of “Born in the U.S.A.,” before those pesky issues like “copyright” and “licensing” came into play.

The U.S. Express captured their first world tag titles when they defeated the North South Connection of Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis, and back in the 1980s, anyone who beat up Adrian Adonis was pretty much a golden god in the eyes of wrestling fans.

Two-time champs, but this time for America

The U.S. Express got to be the first team to defend the WWF Tag Team Championship at a WrestleMania, but they also got to be the first team to lose them at the very first grandaddy of them all in 1985. The despised Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff cheated to win the titles, but they would soon receive their comeuppance. American style.

Windham and Rotunda (who was called “Rotundo” throughout this WWF run, because WWF announcers have always, legitimately always had problems with names and pronunciation) would recapture the titles in June to become even greater American heroes somehow. The Dream Team of Brutus Beefcake and Greg Valentine would defeat the Express for the titles, and Windham and Rotuna/o would break up by the end of the year, as Windham left the company to head back to Florida.

The U.S. Express of Windham and Rotundo/a would last just one year in WWF (exactly one year, to the day), but they burned red-hot, won the tag titles twice, and were the fastest way possible to get to the United States.

Barry Windham becomes an iconic member of the Four Horsemen

Windham’s success in WWF was, of course, a drop in the bucket compared to his career with Jim Crockett, the NWA, and WCW. He’s best known and best remembered for being part of the Four Horsemen, and for good reason.

The seeds for Windham joining the Horsemen began in 1987, when Lex Luger began vying for Ole Anderson’s spot in the stable. Luger eventually got booted from the group, because historically, there’s nothing the Horsemen like better than making fools out of Luger and/or Sting. Luger teamed with Windham to get his revenge on the Horsemen, and the two defeated Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard for the NWA tag titles at the first Clash of the Champions.

Of course, going back to what I said about the Horsemen taking absolutely any opportunity to make Lex Luger look foolish, Windham turned on Luger and took his spot on the Horsemen during a tag title defense against Arn and Tully, and the new Four Horsemen then held every title in the NWA, as Ric Flair was world champ, Windham was United States champ, and Arn and Tully had the tag belts once again.

This lineup is arguably the one people remember better than the original lineup with Ole Anderson, and the sheer talent and entertainment value provided by this iteration is one of the main reasons fans are constantly salivating to have all the members of a heel stable hold all the titles in a company. It’s just cool, dammit.

NWA World Heavyweight Champion

Windham went back to WWF for a short time in 1989 under the moniker “The Widowmaker,” but shortly returned to NWA and WCW after failing to make a significant number of widows. “The Widowmaker” was most notable for being in a book I bought at an elementary school book fair, which listed his finishing move as “the superplex,” and that was the first time I learned that a suplex can be even more super than I realized. (I liked suplexes a lot.)

He quickly rejoined the Horsemen, which now consisted of himself, Flair, Arn, and Sid Vicious, with Ole as their manager.

In 1991, Flair bolted for WWF while still NWA Heavyweight Champion, and the title was vacated. Windham and Lex Luger met in a steel cage at Great American Bash to determine a new champion, and they pulled off the rare double turn, as Luger won the title by dastardly means and hooked up with Harley Race as a manager, and Windham became an adored babyface once again.

It was in 1993 that Windham finally achieved the apex of his career, defeated the Great Muta at SuperBrawl III. Flair returned to the company that night and attempted to present the world title belt to Windham, but that and the Horsemen’s attempts to lure Windham back into the fold failed. Windham then became a “Lone Wolf,” the only natural enemy of four horses.

Windham would lose the world title to Flair at Beach Blast 1993, which was notable for the most a single beach was blasted in that calendar year. He never managed to win another world title, but we’ll always have 1993.

For the record, the WCW world champions in 1993: Masahiro Chono, the Great Muta, Barry Windham, Ric Flair, and Rick Rude. The WWE world champions in 1993: Bret Hart, Yokozuna, and Hulk Hogan. 1993 was wild for a whole bunch of reasons.

“Rap is Crap”

The post-NWA championship years for Barry Windham were the definition of a mixed bag. He hung around WCW for a couple more years before heading back to WWF in 1996, where he had a spectacularly short run as “The Stalker” before forming the New Blackjacks with the man who would eventually become JBL.

Windham, like nearly everyone else during the Monday Night Wars, had a cup of tea with nWo Hollywood before joining up with the “West Texas Rednecks” of Curt Hennig, Windham’s brother Kendall, Bobby Duncum, Jr., and eventually Curly Bill. The Rednecks are fondly remembered to this very day for their music video and hit single “Rap is Crap,” which was used as fodder for their feud with Master P and the No Limit Soldiers.

… Okay, so 1993 had absolutely nothing on 1999 in terms of being buck-wild. The definitive history of “Rap is Crap” can be found right here on this very website, so you should definitely read that, and you should spend the rest of your day watching the above music video. And for another very special anniversary, the Rednecks performed their song “live” on Nitro on July 5, 1999, so unwrap this anniversary present a day early:

(Please make note of Barry Windham’s exceptional, very legitimate drums-playing in that video.)

Happy birthday, Barry. Thanks for the memories and the reminder about what rap is, in your estimation.

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A few years back, vintage WWF ice cream bars became a bit of a meme when CM Punk demanded he get his own visage on a tasty ice cream treat, just like the WWF Superstars of yore. WWE ice cream came back into vogue when The New Day began driving an ice cream cart and promising us for like two months that they were going to give fans ice cream, but then it just ended up being Otter Pops. And I’ll be DAMNED if I consider popsicles to be ice cream. I will be DAMNED.

This past weekend, the United States “celebrated” National Ice Cream Day, which is like four rungs below National Talk Like A Pirate Day in terms of brand recognition, but probably a billion rungs above it in terms of taste satisfaction. Personally, I live every day like it’s National Ice Cream Day, which is why my doctor is so angry at me.

To celebrate National Ice Cream Day, WWE released this fun megamix of the old 1980s 20-second promo clips for WWF ice cream bars that appeared on their syndicated shows. Because you can just put as many commercials INSIDE your program as you want! It’s free!

Sadly, I’ve never actually gotten to eat one of these tasty-looking bad boys. The side that had the Superstar printed on it was a cookie, and the other side was just pure damn chocolate. And no matter how low-quality the cookie, if you put it on top of ice cream, that’s a delicious confection.

Also sadly, it seems that very few of these amazing ice cream promos have been uploaded to YouTube, but let’s bask in the glory of the couple that exist outside of WWE Network, or WWE’s vast private tape vault.

First up, here’s Ken Patera, who understands that former Olympians all watch the Olympics while eating ice cream in a darkened apartment:

And here’s the late, great George “The Animal” Steele, somehow without his trademark green tongue, and exhibiting absolutely no problem with eating himself:

There were a bunch of other spots at the time, of course, including ice cream eatery from Bret Hart, Hillbilly Jim, Nikolai Volkoff, Fabulous Moolah, and a lot more, but I guess we’ll just have to wait for that DVD set to be released. I’m waiting, WWE.

Via YouTube

Back in April, the Detroit Red Wings hosted their final game at the legendary Joe Louis Arena. Next season they’ll be moving into the brand new Little Caesars Arena in midtown. Joe Louis will be demolished.

The arena will officially close its doors on July 30, but on July 29 — this Saturday — WWE will pop back in for one final live event, headlined by Brock Lesnar vs. Samoa Joe, as the “Last Show At The Joe.” That should be an emotional night for a lot of reasons, but mostly for the building’s role in creating so much of the wrestling history we’ve experienced in the modern era.

To celebrate the life of a building with a river view but no windows, let’s look back at some of the greatest pro wrestling moments in the history of Joe Louis Arena. If we forget any, be sure to drop down into our comments section below and let us know.

The Undertaker’s First Championship Victory

By the time his 30+ year career came to a close at WrestleMania 33, the legendary Undertaker had racked up 7 world title reigns; four with the WWE Championship, three with the World Heavyweight Championship. But his first came at the Joe on November 27, 1991, at Survivor Series.

Although the reign only lasted six days — thanks, Hulk Hogan! — the controversial finish to the match and its rematch at This Tuesday In Texas set up the 1992 Royal Rumble, the greatest Rumble ever.

The (Supposed) Biggest Match In Wrestling History

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For over a decade, the biggest fantasy match-up in pro wrestling was WWF Champion Hulk Hogan vs. WCW/NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair. Flair spent some time in the WWF in the early ’90s, but they never pulled the trigger on a televised singles match between the two. WCW took advantage of that fact and booked Hogan vs. Flair at Halloween Havoc ’94, a rematch of the Hulkster’s big arrival at that year’s Bash at the Beach.

Instead of just doing Hogan vs. Flair, WCW overbooked it like nobody’s business. First of all, they put it in a steel cage. Then they made it career vs. career. Then Mr. T became the special guest referee, and Muhammad Ali was involved, and Hogan kicked Sherri Martel in the face, and the post-match angle involved Brutus Beefcake betraying Hogan by dressing up in a black bodysuit and mask to execute Nancy Kerrigan attacks on him.

Oh, and Hogan won, if you were wondering. And per the match stipulation, Ric Flair never wrestled again. [loudest coughing noises in history]

The Mummy Butt-Hug Heard ‘Round The World

Due to the success of Havoc ’95, WCW brought the event back the following year. How do you top Mr. T getting handcuffed to a cage while Muhammad Ali watches Hulk Hogan end Ric Flair’s career in a cage? With a Cobo Hall rooftop monster truck battle and a 7-foot mummy attack that has to be seen (or at least read about) to be believed.

From our write-up of Halloween Havoc 1995:

Hulk Hogan had his neck broken twice in one month. The Giant fell off a building about 20 minutes ago. Neither man sells the other’s offense, and neither man feels like the trauma they’ve gone through excuses them for taking a pin. So Hulk Hogan’s non-wrestling manager who is literally half the size of The Giant’s leg starts randomly attacking people with a title belt and Hogan wins by DQ. This causes the Giant to WIN THE WCW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP. Not to spoil the next night’s Nitro for you, but Jimmy Hart has Hulk Hogan’s power of attorney and signed a contract saying Hogan would lose the belt if he got DQ’d.

Somehow even this is not the worst part of the show. Remember that HIMALAYAN ICE MUMMY?

Hogan has no-sold two neck injuries, no sold a post-monster truck sumo battle choking WITH a twice broken neck and no-sold most of a 7-foot, 400-pound man’s offense in a wrestling match. Jimmy Hart hits him in the back of his broken neck with a 15-pound gold belt and he no-sells it. The Giant locks him in a bear hug, but THAT’s not going to be enough. So here comes an extremely tall Himalayan ice mummy to bear hug him at the same time but from behind and just sorta wiggle his hips while he does it.

The greatest proof that Hulkamania is immortal is that the only thing powerful enough to stop it is ancient Egyptian DP.

The fans at Joe Louis Arena that night were the only ones to ever see the mummy version of The Yeti in person. Lucky. It was also The Giant/The Big Show’s first WCW Championship win, but not his last, and not the last title he’d win at the arena …

Both Of The Big Show’s First Title Wins

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Show’s first WWF Championship win also came at Joe Louis Arena, because wrestling loves repeating itself in front of geographically specific crowd.

The Big Show — Paul Wight, if you’re big nasty — won a triple threat match against Triple H and the Rock at Survivor Series on November 14, 1999, thanks to interference from Vince McMahon. And despite interference from D-Generation X. It was the late ’90s, that’s how everything happened.

From Show’s farewell to the Joe, posted earlier this year:

“I know Joe Louis Arena always holds a special place in my heart, the fans in Detroit because my very first match was in Joe Louis Arena against Hulk Hogan in 1995. I walked out with the World Heavyweight Championship my first match. Every time I’ve walked into that arena I’ve always been reminded of my very first day in the business, my very first day in front of the crowd on pay-per-view.

“Thank you Detroit and thank you Joe Louis Arena, all the wonderful championships and teams and performers that have gone through that arena. It’s going to be sad to see you go, but thank you.”

Fun note: It was also the first time we got to see Big Show cry on WWE TV!

Kurt Angle’s Debut

Most people remember Survivor Series ’99 for the debut of current Raw general manager and WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle. While you might not be able to tell from his debut (which was pitch-perfect, a rare feat for debuting WWE stars), Angle would go on to hold the WWE Championship four times, the World Heavyweight Championship once, the WWE-owned version of the WCW World Heavyweight and United States Championships one time each, the Intercontinental Championship, the Hardcore Championship and the European Championship. And he was one half of the inaugural WWE Tag Team Champions. And he won the King of the Ring.

That’s not even getting into the championships he won in Japan, his six times as TNA World Heavyweight Champion, holding pretty much every belt you can hold in TNA, his NCAA Division I Championship, his numerous amateur wrestling championships OR his Olympic gold medal in heavyweight freestyle wrestling in 1996. This guy was pretty good.

The Best And Worst Of Stone Cold Steve Austin

One of the most famous Stone Cold Steve Austin moments happened at the Joe Louis Arena on September 28, 1998, when Austin interrupted Mr. McMahon’s championship celebration for Kane and the Undertaker by driving a Zamboni to — and into — the ring.

While that will make it into Austin highlight reels from ’98 until the end of time, Joe Louis was actually a bad luck charm for Stone Cold. For example, Austin was thrown off a bridge by the Rock during a Detroit show …

… and in 1999, the Joe was the site of a famous attempt at vehicular manslaughter.

That turned out to be Rikishi, who did it for the Rock. A lot happened at the 1999 Survivor Series, huh?

John Cena’s Pay-per-view Debut

Less than a month after debuting on Smackdown, once and future Face That Runs The Place John Cena made his pay-per-view debut against Chris Jericho at Vengeance on July 21, 2002. Despite being a rookie (with ruthless aggression), Cena was able to pin the first-ever Undisputed Champion, because of course he was. Cena would go on to win at more PPVs than not for the next 15 years and counting, but you saw it first, Joe Louis Arena.

Vengeance 2002 also featured Brock Lesnar’s first WWE loss (by disqualification, to Rob Van Dam), Hulk Hogan losing the Tag Team Championship to Lance Storm and Christian — no, seriously — and a killer triple threat main event between The Rock, Kurt Angle and The Undertaker.

The Undertaker Returns

The Undertaker “returns” a lot, but the coolest return to date (at least in our opinion) happened at the Joe Louis Arena at Survivor Series on November 27, 2005.

About a month earlier, Randy Orton and his dad teamed up to defeat the Undertaker in a casket match. They not only put the Phenom in a casket, they set it on fire. Assuming he was dead, and assuming they would not go to jail for shoot murdering one of their co-workers, the Ortons were riding high. At Survivor Series, Orton eliminates Shawn Michaels to win an elimination match for Team SmackDown and be his squad’s sole survivor. But he’d be forced to face ANOTHER survivor … ah, you know where I’m going with this.

You haven’t seen the Undertaker return until you’ve seen him emerge from a flaming casket that’s just been struck by lightning. Say what you want about the slow walking in mood lighting, but THAT’s how you make an intimidating entrance.

Royal Rumble 2009

Orton had a better night at the Joe seven years later, when he was able to win the 2009 Royal Rumble and go on to headline WrestleMania. He’d end up losing that match to Triple H, however, so maybe it still wasn’t great. Winning the Royal Rumble and losing at WrestleMania is the original “fail to cash in Money in the Bank.”

Orton would repeat the feat and win his second Royal Rumble in 2017.

Batista Quits

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WWE brought pay-per-view back to the Joe in 2010 with Over The Limit, and headlined it with an “I Quit” match between John Cena and Batista.

Cena’s never been known as a gracious winner. The finish of the match sees the two do battle on a car — because the pay-per-view’s name tangentially involves cars — and Big Match John threatening to toss Big Dave off the roof with an Attitude Adjustment. Batista quits before it can happen, giving Cena the win. Cena dumps him off the car through the stage anyway.

The next night on Raw, Batista would quit for real. He wouldn’t appear on WWE TV again until 2014.

Daniel Bryan Wins, For A Day

WWE brought Night of Champions to the Joe on September 15, 2013, and headlined it with Randy Orton vs. Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship. Orton had leaned on help from Triple H and cashed in Money in the Bank to snatch the championship from Bryan at SummerSlam, so this was the leader of the Yes Movement’s chance to settle the score. Bryan won the match clean with a running knee, and became WWE Champion for the second time, but for the first time for real.

At least until the next night on Raw in Cleveland when Triple H claimed Scott Armstrong made a fast count and stripped Bryan of the championship. The story would culminate in arguable the greatest WrestleMania story ever at WrestleMania 30 in New Orleans the following year, but it’s still depressing to see the final good year of a wrestler’s career spent getting dicked out of his accolades.

Shane McMahon Returns

From last year:

Monday’s episode of Raw opened with the presentation of the Vincent J. McMahon Legacy of Excellence Award, a Mr. Burns-esque trophy awarded by Vince McMahon to his daughter, Stephanie. What started as an excuse for The Authority to congratulate itself turned into a moment WWE fans will never forget: the shocking return of Shane McMahon, Shane O’ Mac, to WWE after a six year absence.

Shane — famous for stepping into the ring and accomplishing dangerous feats against Kurt Angle, Steve Blackman, Test, Kane and others — left the company in 2010 to pursue his own business interests. Shane returned to confront Vince and Stephanie about the job they’ve been doing running the company, and … man, we can talk about where the WWE storyline goes all night — and we will — but play that video again. Listen to the crowd response. Watch him tear up when the crowd absolutely can’t stop “yes” chanting and cheering for him. That’s an incredible moment.

Shane would end up losing a Hell in a Cell match to the Undertaker at WrestleMania that would’ve given him control over Monday Night Raw had he won. Vince McMahon gave him control of the show anyway, for some reason, and eventually we got another brand split with Shane taking over Smackdown. [shrug]

The Final Raw

WWE brought Raw to the Joe for the final time this March with a Shawn Michaels appearance, a fire and brimstone WrestleMania promo from Paul Heyman and, of course, Big Show getting a final win in the building.

It also featured Braun Strowman showing up and trucking Roman Reigns, which is always a highlight:

Via @cjzero

Last Show At The Joe

That brings us to this Saturday, and the final show at Joe Louis Arena. Can WWE resist sending one of their most important buildings away without a major event? Could we see Samoa Joe defeat Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship to add intrigue to SummerSlam, and give people something to talk about as the Joe shuts its doors on Sunday? How great would it be if the Joe’s final match is a guy named Joe winning WWE’s top title?

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: We’re balls-deep in the great United States and Canada beef of 1997, with the Hart Foundation teaming up to throw every stipulation imaginable at the wall to see what sticks, and the United States enlisting the help of a man vaguely named THE PATRIOT who loves America so much but is more symbolism than man. Also, most of the international issues revolve around eating dog food and wearing dresses.

If you haven’t seen this pay-per-view, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

This is one of the most important shows of the year, so please make sure to share the column on social media and drop down into our comments section to let us know you enjoyed it and/or what you thought of the show. We can either talk about this, or a Natalya championship match at SummerSlam 2017. Your call.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF SummerSlam for August 3, 1997.

Best: First, Here’s The Greatest Picture Of Vince McMahon Ever Taken

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The World Wrestling Federation in August 1997 is obsessed with national pride, so we open SummerSlam with an indie show-style Star-Spangled Banner on cassette tape. While they pan the cameras around to show everyone beaming with American Grit, we see Vince McMahon looking like Sam the Eagle with BISCHOFF SMELLS TURNER’S ASS by his face.

When Vince McMahon dies, this picture should be the only thing on his tombstone. Not even his name.

Best: Watch Where You’re Punching, Chyna

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While I’m sure this match was booked to end with the dramatic reveal of Dude Love, a flying elbow from the top of a steel cage meant to evoke Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka vs. Don Muraco and a fist-pumping, feel-good win for the underdog Mankind, you probably remember the SummerSlam 1997 opener as “that time Chyna punched Mick Foley right in the asshole.” I mean, look at it.

The most interesting thing about this match for me is that the only thing that really elevates it from a normal, by-the-numbers WWE cage match is the severity of Foley’s bumping. Go to extremes in both directions and that’s exactly what turns him into an American folk legend or whatever less than a year later: a cage match that’s barely a match, propelled to legendary status by Mick Foley bumping harder and crazier than any one man should. Although to this match’s credit, while it doesn’t have anybody falling through a cage roof or As God As His Witness Being Broken In Half, it does probably feature the reason Foley had to write city names on his palm when he was Raw General Manager:

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Hunter and Foley would have better matches a few years later — hell, the Canadian Stampede opener kicks this match’s ass — but WWE isn’t about “good matches” as much as it is “creating moments,” and that’s what this did. Even if Mick sweated off the Dude Love heart before his big spot and had Chyna’s arm up to the elbow inside of him.

Worst: The Tax Crusher

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Remember back in March when the Undertaker presented New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman a construction-paper tombstone to celebrate the death of a tax bill that would allow “sports wrestling” to return to the state? If not, go watch it.

She calls it “sports wrestling,” which is wonderful, and is like, “I don’t like wrestling myself, but my wiener kid liked it. He doesn’t like it anymore, but I bought all the figurines, which is how grandmas say action figures, so I’m not going to make you go all the way to Madison Square Garden to see it.” Big ass Undertaker is just standing there in his goth Dracula samurai robes with prison teardrops on his face, posing for mark photos with little kids while Linda McMahon exchanges secret handshakes with the other lizard people.

This finally pays off at SummerSlam, where she shows up, gets booed out of the building and is awarded a WWE Championship belt for no reason.

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Christie Todd Whitman: the original Big Dog.

Worst: Poor Brian Pillman

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It’s really a shame to see Brian Pillman at this point in his career, only two months before his death. He’s clearly in a lot of pain, and while he’s got a great character going and could do great character work in his sleep, he’s limited physically, his offense has almost nothing behind it and he’s not able to do simple stuff like, say, get tossed off the top and crotch himself on the ropes. He misjudges it, clips his leg and falls shoulderblade-first on the apron. Goldust is doing all he can to keep it together, but what can you do?

The finish is supposed to be Goldust going for a sunset flip, Pillman hanging on to the ropes, Marlena swatting him in the face with a purse and Goldust completing the flip for the pin. Instead, this happens:

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Pillman’s nowhere near the rope, so Goldust undershoots the sunset flip attempt and almost breaks his neck. Pillman still has to get them where they’re going for the spot, though, so it’s a tug-of-war teabagging until he can scoot them close enough to the ropes to get hit in the face with a purse. In the shadow of a mannequin. And his boot is about to fall off. It’s not the best Brian Pillman memory.

Worst: Tag Warz

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This show features two tag team matches so bad they’d straight-up turn me into Grandpa Simpson at La Maison Derrière if the rest of the card wasn’t lousy with historical significance.

Most notably is the Gang Warz 8-man tag between Los Boricuas and the Disciples of Apocalypse. The Nation of Domination shows up to look intimidating, and we get an unbelievably terrible moment where Ahmed Johnson, a guy whose knee is just healthy enough for him to stand at ringside and maybe interfere but definitely not wrestle, tries to Pearl River Plunge Crush on the exposed arena floor and, I shit you not, gets none of it. He powerbombs Crush onto his own legs, hurting himself again. How do you miss THE FLOOR?

Thos Boricuas steal a win off Ahmed’s accidental appropriation of Teddy Hart’s moveset, and a three-team brawl breaks out. Thankfully, Crush is there to slowly ride a motorcycle around the ring to clear everyone out. Nothing says intimidation like a motorcycle moving through a small corridor at 3 MPH while 20,000 people watch!

The other match, which I’m not even going to bother to screencap, is the Legion of Doom vs. the Godwinns. These guys have been feuding and attacking each other and covering one another in pig’s food for MONTHS, and this is yet another in their endless series of “we accidentally broke Henry O.’s neck once and none of us can get over it” matches. The LOD wins with a spike piledriver, because they’re dicks.

I hope nobody actually breaks their neck on this show!

Best: Surprise! Fans Love Bad-asses Who Can’t Stop Kicking Ass

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British Bulldog vs. Ken Shamrock isn’t great — Shamrock isn’t Bret Hart, Owen Hart’s busy and Dynamite Kid isn’t standing in the corner, which are the three possible good British Bulldog matches — but the ending is FANTASTIC.

It’s pretty much Chinlock City, Bitch, until the fight goes to the outside. British Bulldog has promised to eat dog food (or something) if he loses to Shamrock, so there’s an open can of dog food on the announce table. Bulldog feels froggy, scoops out a handful and smacks Shamrock in the face. This is the moment when we find out exactly what not to do with Ken Shamrock, as he starts “seeing red” and spends the next like, 5-10 minutes brutally murdering the Bulldog. Like, he kicks the shit out of him and puts him in a rear naked choke that actually probably would have medically killed the man if wrestling was real. Trainers, EMTs, referees down, but Shamrock won’t give it up. When they’re finally able to break the hold, Shamrock starts suplexing THEM. The crowd goes ape for all of this, and by the end of it is chanting SHAM-ROCK SHAM-ROCK.

This guy just lost a match by disqualification because of dog food anger and is the most over guy on the show. Dude’s bleeding from the mouth with a thousand-yard stare, and suddenly he SCREAMS and the crowd ROARS behind it. It’s great. Ken Shamrock might’ve only been able to do one pro wrestling thing well, but he did it really well.

WORST EVER: Stridex Presents ‘Seven Minutes In Hell’

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WWE Network

If you’ve never seen this, you’re in for a treat. Right alongside Dino Bravo lifting weights, the Katie Vick wake and Bayley This Is Your Life on the list of worst and most embarrassing WWE segments of all time is Your SummerSlam Million Dollar Chance, brought to you by the kids in the ball-pit at Discovery Zone. Remember how Mr. McMahon’s Million Dollar Mania ended with the stage collapsing and the set falling on him? That’s The Revival vs. DIY compared to this.

Here’s what you need to know: Over the past MONTH, WWF has aired commercials during Raw (starring almost-personality “Wink Collins”) featuring “clues” that if collected, analyzed and submitted, would give you a chance to go to SummerSlam and win one million dollars. The fourth commercial featured all the clues so you didn’t have to watch the first three, but whatever. They called a couple of people during Raw but only two of the three answered, and nobody was like, “maybe we should pre-tape the phone call parts of this just in case something goes horribly wrong.” WWE has never heard the idea, “live, outgoing phone calls on live television” and thought anything but WOW, CAN WE DO IT FOR TEN MINUTES?

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Who cares about that bombing, tell me more about this wrestling contest.

Sunny (with a personality) and Sable (without) join Todd Pettengill and the contest winners — a disinterested child and a Stone Cold Steve Austin cosplayer — to stand near a WWF logo covered in post-it notes and a coffin full of money to make some live-ass phone calls on live-ass pay-per-view. The first person they try to call doesn’t answer. The second person gets disconnected. The third person’s mom answers, and when they finally get him on the line, he tells them he’s not watching SummerSlam because his cable company doesn’t carry it. It’s such a brutal process that Todd starts doing a tits-centric bit while a 10-year old stands like, two feet away.

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It’s also worth noting that Sunny’s wearing so much body glitter it becomes TV-MA and may have put me through puberty. Like, just now.

Once we finally get a couple of callers to agree to understand what’s happening and try to win a million dollars, they get to pick their numbers (and the corresponding keys to the coffin) first. Congratulations on being flown out to SummerSlam and hanging out on stage with the talent, contest winners, you better hope these bothered strangers don’t win it first!

The good news (for them) is that neither caller wins. But then the kid doesn’t win either. And the Stone Cold Steve Austin guy doesn’t win. WWE held this contest for over a month with the help of two corporations, aired four different commercials about it, orchestrated live phone calls on multiple live broadcasts, flew two families to SummerSlam and gave them TV time on pay-per-view for nobody to win the contest.

Unbelievably, hysterically, historically bad. I hope Vince has that coffin buried in his backyard.

Best, And Then Tragically Worst:

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Yep.

So, the stage is set for a great match. Stone Cold Steve Austin has spent the past year having some of the best matches anybody’s ever seen with Bret Hart. Here, he’s up against Bret’s brother Owen for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam. It’s the peak of USA vs. Canada, Canadian Stampede blew the roof off pretty much every building in Canada and this gives Austin something to do while Bret and Shawn Michaels … uh, work through their problems.

And as you might expect, it’s really good. Then, about 15 minutes into the match, Austin whips Hart into the ropes and tries a side slam. Owen reverses it into a sit-out Tombstone piledriver. Then, the course of WWE changes completely.

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To clarify, Austin didn’t actually break his neck here, but he DID get a bruised spinal column and temporary paralysis. And he had to win the match anyway with the world’s saddest and least believable roll-up FROM A TEMPORARILY PARALYZED MAN because the pre-match stipulation said Austin would have to kiss Owen’s ass if he lost. So we go from a dream to a nightmare in every direction.

Austin’s POV:

“As soon as my head hit that mat, I was thinking Christopher Reeve. Cause I knew I was never gonna walk again, ever. I couldn’t feel anything from my neck down …

“Man, I’m laying there, and now pain’s starting to set in, and my interior delts are burning like fire. There was no way I was gonna lay there and let some ambulance or bunch of paramedics carry me out of that ring. I hit him with the roll-up; it looks like shit. One, two, three; I’m the champion. I grab the belt, and I held it up in the air, and when I looked back at that footage, and I look in my eyes, if you look at my eyes, the lights are on there, but there ain’t nobody home. I’m … pretty fucked up, and I’m really hurt. But I did it. I remember going to the back, I sat down on a bench, and I was in a world of hurt. And I was confused and I was … didn’t know what was gonna happen to me. When you come that close to almost being paralyzed for the rest of your life, it really fucks your head up.”

Honestly, it’s crazy to think how much this changed things. Changed everything. If Owen had like, chosen to work the leg instead of the neck, Austin wouldn’t have had a career-threatening injury at the height of his rise. Without that injury, he could’ve been on top of the company for another 5-10 years, easy.

And God, if Owen hadn’t made the mistake and had walked out of this match with a classic under his belt, he might’ve been positioned as a top guy in the late 90s. That means he wouldn’t have gone back to being the Blue Blazer for comedy, which means he might still be alive today. All because of this one piledriver where he went to his butt instead of to his knees. Your knee to the floor, that’s the difference between two lives, two careers and millions of dollars.

Best-ish: The Main Event

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Want to see someone who isn’t into what they’re doing? Keep an eye on Owen Hart as he has to hang out at ringside and act like a heel distraction like 15 minutes after possibly ending the career of the company’s biggest new star.

The pre-match stipulation on this show of absurd-ass stipulations says that if Bret Hart can’t defeat the Undertaker for the WWF Championship, he’ll “never wrestle on American soil again.” He tried to back out of it via semantics, but they’re holding him to it. Shawn Michaels just decided he also wanted to be on the card somewhere, so Vince McMahon (in an ongoing theme of favoritism that goes to some pretty unfortunate places by the end of the year) makes him the special guest referee. To keep Bret from flipping all the way out, they explain that if Shawn doesn’t call the match down the middle, HE will never be able to wrestle on American soil again. And then as the match is happening, Paul Bearer and the Hart Foundation are both at ringside. It’s encumbered by everything, and Shawn’s not even wearing his official referee booty shorts. The hell, guys?

If you’ve seen Bret Hart wrestle Sid, or have a boring match with Kevin Nash, you’ve seen this main event. It’s a good 20-minute match stretched into 30, which kills it, but was probably necessary after what happened to Austin. So they’re in here with too much story already telling even MORE story, like Shawn missing Undertaker pinfalls because he’s busy trying to clear the ringside area of ne’er-do-wells. And then Michaels is out here taking ref bumps, which is the opposite of what a wrestler ref is supposed to do, allowing Bret to cheat.

Bret wears Undertaker out with a chair, but then Shawn comes to and tries to stop him. Bret drops an f-bomb on him and spits in his face, so Shawn tries to take his head off with the chair. Bret ducks, because of course he does, and Shawn knocks out the Undertaker. Bret covers, Shawn has to make the count, and Bret Hart is now the 5-time WWF Champion. And uh, Shawn Michaels totally caused the finish with an illegal weapon shot and by every imaginable definition “didn’t call the match down the middle,” so what, we never gonna let him wrestle again? Or have we already forgotten that part?

So that’s The SummerSlam.

Coming Soon

A lot of sadness. The stories of Bret Hart, Brian Pillman, Owen Hart, and frankly everyone in the Hart Foundation take sad turns. The stage is set for Montreal. Austin is injured for a few months, and the Intercontinental Championship he just won will have to be vacated. The Undertaker’s brother is about to show up and start setting shit on fire. It’s a dark time.

On the bright side, we’re only a Raw away from the arrival of the Most Electrifying Man In Sports Entertainment. By SummerSlam 1998, everything has changed.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: SummerSlam ’97 happened, and now everything’s happening in a landslide. Bret Hart is the new WWF Champion thanks to Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker wants to kill Shawn Michaels, and Owen Hart nearly paralyzed Stone Cold Steve Austin. Now we’re stepping into what might be the two most important Raws of the year, back-to-back.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re on the road to Ground Zero: In Your House!

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for August 4, 1997.

America Still Needs Your Help

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Up first this week is one of WWE’s favorite tropes: celebration of exciting wrestling things interrupted by middle-management decision-making.

With former anti-American fat guy heel Gorilla Monsoon unable to fulfill all of his duties as WWF President, a former anti-American heel fat guy Sgt. Slaughter was named Commissioner. If you aren’t familiar with Slaughter’s work, he started as an evil drill sergeant who eventually saw the light when America needed to be defended from the Iron Sheik. But then, you know, Hulk Hogan showed up, so Sarge was chopped liver. He eventually came back to the WWF and sided with the Iraqis during the Gulf War, winning the Championship. But then, you know, Hulk Hogan showed up, so Sarge was chopped liver. Somewhere in the middle he joined G.I. Joe and shot lasers at, but never hit, Cobra.

WWF Commissioners make it their duty to be critical to heels and mistreat them for misdirected babyface reasons until jerks like me side with them, so Slaughter opens Raw by getting in the face of the entire Hart Foundation. He signs Bret Hart to a WWF Championship match with The Patriot at Ground Zero, promises Owen Hart he’ll have to face Stone Cold Steve Austin again when Austin’s healthy, gives British Bulldog a TBA match with Ken Shamrock and threatens to suspend Brian Pillman if he doesn’t wrestle in a dress. In fact, Pillman will now have to continue wrestling in a dress until he wins a match. He also decides it’s okay to physically drag Pillman to the ring in the dress:

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Pillman ends up losing to Bob Holly, arguably the worst wrestler on the roster, via count-out when Goldust and Marlena distract him at ringside. And Sarge is still like, “that counts a loss, you still have to wrestle in the dress,” despite the extenuating circumstances. And also the crowd chanting gay slurs, because 1997.

The good/bad news here is that Sarge is completely emasculated by November — thanks, D-Generation X — and is a corporate heel lackey by 1998. All the story needed to come full circle is Hulk Hogan showing up and being better at being browbeaten and following orders.

Worst: America STILL Needs Your Help

Okay, go!

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I don’t have much to say about the Godwinns vs. the Headbangers, other than noting one of the first instances of a “boring” chant on Raw and pointing out Henry O.’s post-match promo, which consists of him holding up the Confederate flag to the camera and yelling, “THESE COLORS DON’T RUN!”

My thoughts:

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And hey, speaking of Ahmed,

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Worst: To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turn

Ahmed Johnson, now with Buff Bagwell-style choker, takes on Chainz of the Disciples of Apocalypse. And he wins, too, which results in … the Nation of Domination turning on him and whipping him with a belt?

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Me either, guys.

I guess the Nation of Domination finally realized they’d offered membership to a guy they hated, couldn’t understand, were embarrassed to be seen with and couldn’t rely on to get through a Gang Warz brawl without blowing out 1-3 knees. You can put 15 kneepads on a horse but you can’t make it drink, you know?

I’ll jump ahead a week and retroactively give this turn a Best, though, because it sets up next week’s Chainz vs. Faarooq match. Trust me, you’ll like how that one ends.

Worst: Ken Shamrock, Boricua

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In this week’s other Gang Warz-related news, Kama Mustafa loses a match to Ken Shamrock when Los Boricuas show up and beat him up at ringside. In a move that I’ll chalk up to a barely functioning brain instead of being a bad babyface, Shamrock somehow doesn’t see any of this in his peripheral vision (pictured) and suplexes Kama for the cheap win. It’s a pretty big step down from flipping out and murdering the Bulldog and a bunch of referees at SummerSlam, but at least I can pretend this led to Shamrock joining Los Boricuas and rocking that white pants and fedora look.

Brakkus Is Still Almost Here

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(Other way, honey.)

Best: Shawn Michaels Degenerates

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And now we get to the multifaceted segment that makes this one of the most important Raws of the year.

At SummerSlam, Shawn Michaels was the special guest referee for the WWF Championship match between The Undertaker and Bret Hart. Shawn hates Bret, so they gave him a stipulation: if he didn’t call the match down the middle, he’d never be able to wrestle in the United States again. The match ends with Bret spitting in Shawn’s face, and instead of like, disqualifying him, Shawn tries to hit him with a steel chair. He accidentally hits the Undertaker, costing Taker the match and handing over the championship to his blood rival. Also, he didn’t even kind of call the match down the middle. They write around that by having Shawn say he did, and everyone going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The good news is that Shawn is now officially sick of everyone’s shit, and is going to tell us about it. He blames the fans for blaming all their problems on him, screams in Vince McMahon’s face until even World’s Biggest Shawn Michaels Fan Vince is rolling his eyes, and, in a moment of shooty goodness, drops this for the first time:

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Vince gets so alienated and disappointed that he leaves, leaving Shawn to run his mouth for a while about the Undertaker. That of course brings out Taker, and they set up the match for Ground Zero that in turn sets up the first Hell in a Cell at Badd Blood. Next week, on the same show where the Nation of Domination rockets to era relevance, Shawn throws in with a pack of degenerate cronies, starts telling people to suck his dick, and takes the “change wrestling forever” torch from the nWo.

But that’s not all! Speaking of the Undertaker and Hell in a Cell …

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WWE Network

Undertaker’s promo gets interrupted once again by Paw Bear, who promises that he talked to Kane last night, and that Kane is coming soon. Taker tries to leave, but as he does, his spooky blue lights turn red. There’s no explanation as to why yet, but man, knowing where this goes, how great of an image is that?

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Just think about how brilliantly this all comes together. Shawn and Bret have issues. Those issues get Shawn selfishly involved in Bret’s match with Undertaker. Shawn’s hatred for Bret (and Bret being a manipulative dick) ends up costing Taker the title to Bret. Now Taker wants to kill Shawn, so Shawn’s got to enlist a bunch of goons to watch his back. Meanwhile, Taker has to watch his back, because his old manager’s bringing in a dude to kill him. It’s not deep character development or anything, but it’s simple and easy to follow, and goes from A to B to C to D in a logical, exciting, and compelling way. We even get a relatively subtle (considering) fourth wall break, character consistency through creative honesty, and a ton of foreshadowing.

I would give anything for Raw to be this good again. And I’m saying that about a show with Henry Godwinn waving the Confederate flag and a conversation about how sexy Brian Christopher is while Brian Christopher’s dad makes waggly eyebrows at him.

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I think that’s every Internet post about the Divas from 2008-2016.

Note: Brian Christopher Is Not Very Sexy

Brian Christopher takes on (and loses to) TAGGAMIDGINOGO, and it’s so uneventful I spend most of the match (1) noticing the hilarious Batman ’66 rogues gallery cam they use for special guest ring announcer Sunny, and (2) dissecting Sunny’s signature “sexy” stance. It goes:

1. hug yourself like you’re holding in poop
2. pop a squat like you’re pooping
3. wipe the poop in your hair

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Good luck ever seeing anything else.

Best: The Final Hunter Hearst Helmsley Match

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Everything changes for him next week, so this is technically the final Raw appearance of classic, non-degenerate Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Isn’t it absolutely insane that the career-making faction-joining for Triple H and The Rock happened on the same episode?

Helmsley gets a match with Vader, who at this point might as well be a tumbleweed in a Vader mask. He’s such an unbelievable afterthought. The match ends about two minutes in when Chyna dropkicks Paw Bear — not captured on camera, as the ring blocked the shot in one camera and Paul’s giant body blocked it in the other — and both men end up brawling to the floor and getting counted out. Vader’s so bummed about life that he can’t even throw a convincing temper tantrum:

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Next week, Shawn MIchaels is like, “hey man, have you ever considered telling people to suck your dick?” And rich guy Hunter Hearst Helmsley is like, “huh, I’ve been going about this all wrong.” In two weeks, they’re teaming up. In a couple of months, they’ve got a team name. And you know, in a couple of years Triple H is WWF Champion, and in a couple of decades he’s running the company. For want of a crotch chop.

Worst: Come On, Come On, Listen To The Money Talks

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This match between a tongueless Muslim sovereign and a man dressed like an American flag is brought to you by Money Talks, director Brett Ratner’s first, less successful attempt in the “Chris Tucker nasally sasses someone culturally different from him” genre. The pre-match discussion is mostly about Charlie Sheen, who shows up on Raw only 15 years later! Via Skype!

The Patriot wins easily with the hilariously named UNCLE SLAM, because he’s suddenly got a title match and nobody gives a curly-toed shit about the Sultan. Bret shows up after the match for a brawl, because the first line in Vince Russo’s contract stated, “there must be 3-5 ringside brawls per episode or I walk.”

Best: Two Things

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Firstly, it’s good to know that even spinally shocked Stone Cold Steve Austin is the coolest guy on the show.

He suffered a bruised spinal column and temporary paralysis at SummerSlam, so of course he interrupts the opening segment of Raw to shit-talk the Hart Foundation during their middle management meeting with Sgt. Slaughter. He’s not wearing a neck brace … he’s carrying one. When Owen Hart tries to use interference from Bret and the British Bulldog to defeat Dude Love in the main event, Austin shows back up, tricks the Hart Foundation into distracting everyone at ringside, and blasts Owen in the face with one of his own Slammy Awards. Dude Love wins, and Austin can somehow still outmaneuver like eight guys while his neck’s practically broken.

Of course, Austin would still have to relinquish the Tag Team and Intercontinental Championships a little over a month later due to the severity of the injury, and would be sidelined until Survivor Series. But he still finds time to show up and unofficially kick off the most important feud in WWE history while he’s on the DL.

Secondly, in a point similar to but nowhere near as notable as the “Triple H decided to start helping Shawn Michaels on the same show The Rock joined the Nation of Domination” thing, check out this appearance from the future “Stooges” Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco on the same show where the third Stooge, Sgt. Slaughter, returned and became Commissioner. Things are just falling into place right now whether they’re supposed to or not.

Next Week:

• a couple of undercard guys throw in with groups and set themselves up to become two of the biggest stars of this (and the next) era
• a legend returns to become an “insurance policy”
• Shawn Michaels and Mankind have one of the best TV matches of the year
• Raw is suddenly really good

Via WWE

2016 can go to hell. We’ve had enough bad news to last a few years, so we absolutely hope that this isn’t more bad news. According to Mean Gene Okerlund, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan has been hospitalized for a few days.

We’ve expressed our unending love for Heenan here before so our prayers are definitely with the Heenan family.

Bobby Heenan was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2002. Though he beat it, he would never fully regain his voice, a tragic irony for someone so known for his quick wittedness and legendary commentary. In 2007, Heenan would have to go into an induced coma after complications from reconstructive surgery on his jaw. Over the years he’s suffered from many falls, breaking his hips and shoulder in the process. As his appearance has waned, Heenan has made fewer public appearances.

Here’s the most recent video of Heenan, taken at Wrestling & Comic Book Collectorfest at the former ECW Arena. Video courtesy of Title Match Wrestling.

And now, here’s classic footage of Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon examining Heenan’s kayfabe neck injury that he had for, like five years.

Get well soon, Brain. The humanoids are rooting for you.

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Good news for anyone who read André The Giant: Closer To Heaven or wants to see someone playing Dusty Rhodes in a movie: Variety is reporting that a feature film based on the graphic novel based on the impossible life of the legendary pro wrestler is in development. Anybody want a peanut?

Roussimoff’s daughter Robin Christensen-Roussimoff will consult on the film and assigned the exclusive rights for the biography to the producers.

“André the Giant rode the wave of the rise of wrestling in America, while suffering from the painful health condition of gigantism – there’s an Elephant Man story here,” Steindorff said.

“As a lifelong wrestling fan, I can say with conviction that no one was bigger than Andre,” said Lion Forge CEO David Steward II. “His presence and charisma were so powerful, and you could tell there was much more to him under the surface of his ring persona. It’s been an amazing experience telling that story in the book with Robin’s help. With all the spectacle, action, and emotion there on the page, a feature film just made perfect sense.”

There’s a wealth of material on the Giant’s life available even if they didn’t have a graphic novel to reference, from his storied drinking skills and worldwide fame to his late career and death.

Let’s just make sure Hulk Hogan isn’t a consultant.

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WWE’s post-WrestleMania roster cleanup began in earnest on Friday with the release of a handful of Superstars, from former Funkadactyl Cameron to former anonymous Raw General Manager Hornswoggle. That was followed by the announcement that King Barrett was formally leaving the company as well, and the upsetting axing of Damien Sandow.

On Wednesday, we added another unexpected name to that list as WWE released Steve Lombardi, aka legendary jobber The Brooklyn Brawler, after over 30 years of service. The news was confirmed by Cynthia Heenan, wife of the Brawler’s former manager Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan.

Lombardi began with the then-WWF in 1983, teaming with fellow Jobber Mt. Rushmore head Barry Horowitz. He became the Brooklyn Brawler in 1989 — a guy in jeans and a New York Yankees shirt who professed to be a street fighter, but almost exclusively lost, even to roosters — but that wasn’t his only role. In addition to becoming a producer and road agent, Lombardi competed as Kim Chee, Doink the Clown, MVP (not that one), Abe “Knuckleball” Schwartz, the Red Knight and a number of other utility roles.

Brawler commented on his release via Twitter:

In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, he explained what kept him around (and losing) all that time.

“Not every senator becomes a president, ya know what I mean? My goal was to have steady work for the rest of my life.”

Best of luck in your future street fights, Brawler.

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WWE Hall of Famer Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart is never shy about saying what he doesn’t like about pro wrestling, and telling you why. We’ve covered him explaining why Shane McMahon didn’t belong in a main-event match at WrestleMania, why he thought the crummy “screwjob” ending to the Women’s Championship match at Payback was “pretty lame” and how UFC is currently putting on a better pro wrestling product than WWE. He thought the Royal Rumble was boring, thought the Owen Hart DVD was “bullsh*t” and thinks Hulk Hogan is a dirtbag. We could go on.

In the latest episode of his Sharpshooter Show, the Hitman shared his thoughts on WWE’s “New Era” and expressed a concern you might not expect from one of WWE’s smaller champions: there aren’t enough big dudes around.

His comments:

“I’d say that to me professional wrestling today has mostly little people in it … I don’t see any real big men anymore. Very few anyway. The ones that are in it aren’t used properly. Like Mark Henry. It just seems to me, and I don’t mean to disrespect anyone in the business. A lot of guys are working really hard. I miss seeing some of the big guys. When you talk about getting rid of a Wade Barrett. Guys like Mark Henry are seeing less and less time on TV.

“It seems like the wrestlers they’re all little jumping bean guys. They’re all Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels kind of smaller guys. I was 230 pounds. I think I was bigger, a little bit bigger, in mass than some of these guys today. There’s so many guys that have the same stats. Six feet tall, five-eleven, one hundred and eighty five or ninety pounds. Dolph Ziggler. They do a million high spots. They’re in great, phenomenal shape. They all look the same. They all got rock hard abs. They all look like swimmers. I miss the guys that would go out there that looked like Nikolai Volkoff. Or somebody that looks like Don Leo Jonathan or Mad Dog Vachon. Where’s the big guys? Where’s the King Kong Bundys? Who’s hiding all the King Kong Bundys in the world? Where did they go?”

He’s got a point …

WWE Network

Pro wrestling could use a new batch of enormous, threatening ugly guys. Even the new “monsters” like Braun Strowman mostly look like non-threatening characters from Game of Thrones in tank tops and Halloween costumes. More dudes who look like extras from Over The Top, please!

What do you think? Let us know in our comments section below.

WWE Promotional Image

Last week, Variety broke the news that Robin Christensen-Roussimoff, the daughter of WWE Hall of Famer and pop culture icon André the Giant, would be helping develop a feature film based on the incredible life of the 8th Wonder of the World. The film will follow the plot of the 2015 graphic novel André the Giant: Closer to Heaven, so technically it’s a comic book movie. And who should you get to direct your comic book movie?

Christensen-Roussimoff spoke to WrestleZone about who she’d like to direct the film, and here’s her geeky answer:

“My personal choice, in my geekdom, is Joss Whedon. He’s just got such an interesting view of things that I think he could make it a lot of fun. That’s my personal pick but I don’t know who they have in mind.”

Let’s do it. Suddenly Hulk Hogan dies in the third act to help André get through WrestleMania III. Bret Hart and Jim the Anvil Neidhart spend the entirety of the WrestleMania 2 battle royal nonchalantly quipping about the people they’re eliminating.

As for who will play André himself, that’s a harder question.

“It will be a live action movie. Who’s going to play my Dad? I think I’ll leave that to the professionals. We are going to have to get a character actor, obviously. I don’t know how they are going to do it exactly. They might do somebody that is tall enough for visual and then have someone do the voice. I don’t know if it’s going to be digital or practical make-up. It will be interesting. He had such a unique look. He had such a unique voice. They are really going to need to pull out a lot of special effects for this.”

Michael B. Jordan all the way. Or Hodor in a big wig.

Via YouTube

Have you ever heard of R. Kelly’s “Little Man” defense when he went to court for allegedly peeing on an underage girl in his sex tape? So here’s the story: R. Kelly’s defense mounted an argument based on Marlon Wayans’ movie Little Man in which his head is CGI’d on a baby’s body. Kelly’s defense tried to make a connection between that movie and R. Kelly’s sex tape, trying to make the jury believe it was possible someone CGI’d R. Kelly’s face on some other guy who peed on the girl.

Why is that relevant? Because it’s 2016 and there are people who are trying to make an argument that Hulk Hogan was actually voiced over in his now-infamous racist rant. His lawyers first came up with that argument and now a more credible voice has doubled down on it. Virgil hopped on WrestleZone Radio to talk about his relationship with Hulk Hogan and the belief that there was a vocal impersonator behind the video.

I don’t think, to me, I don’t think Hulk said that type of stuff. It could have been a voice over or something like that. I don’t think Hulk would ever say anything like that. It could have been somebody else. You know how people do voice overs of people that are pretty important? They can have your mouth moving and they put the words into it.

…It’s not that they don’t like him, it’s that they’re jealous. A lot of people can get jealous. They say they are in his position and they are not.

Or, and just hear me out here, Hulk Hogan said some really horrible, racist things and he has to own up to it. I know it sucks when our heroes and friends do horrible things, but, hey, those are the breaks. And the sooner we just deal with it instead of making excuses, the better.

How about this, though? Why doesn’t Hulk Hogan just make Virgil his new lawyer and do a real-life My Cousin Virgy? Sounds like a plan.

The stories about Andre the Giant are just as legendary as the man’s career was. There are the tales of him drinking just about every WWE superstar under the table. Andre’s liver was said to be the size of a Buick’s engine. (It probably wasn’t, but the tall tales remain.) There’s the story of him stopping Ultimate Warrior dead in his tracks with a punch during an in-ring contest. There was his fear of flying and the routine he would put himself through before every flight. (It consisted of an enema.) Whatever corner of the wrestling world you traverse, there’s likely a story there awaiting you about how Andre the Giant truly was the “eighth wonder of the world.”

For WrestleMania III, Hulk Hogan has gone on record saying that he didn’t know if Andre was going to put him over (let him win) that night — Andre was just so powerful, even in his twilight, that the decision of the match was really up to him. He did the honorable thing that night, passing the proverbial torch to Hogan and ushering in a new generation for WWE.

Even in the most grandiose of tales, though, rarely do you ever hear about Andre being a malicious man. Those who knew him described him as a kind soul, someone willing to give you the last pennies in his pocket.

Check out the above video that WWE’s YouTube channel dropped today in honor of Andre’s birthday. Hope you’re having a good time body-slamming angels in heaven, boss.

WWE Network

The Resurrection of Jake the Snake is on Netflix now, so if you’d like to watch a thing that made Stone Cold Steve Austin cry half a dozen times, check it out. If you’d like a more lighthearted story from Jake Roberts’ life — maybe one in which he accidentally creates one of the most famous finishing moves in wrestling history — look no further than this promotional interview with Niagara Frontier Publications for the upcoming Niagara Falls Comic Con.

Roberts has told the story of how he created the DDT numerous times, but if you’ve never heard it, it’s today’s TIL. The best part is that it was a complete accident, caused by a clumsy opponent who paid for his mistake by getting dropped on the top of his head. Ladies and gentlemen, the DDT:

JM: It sounds like it. … Here’s the next thing I’m curious about. The DDT. One of the best finishing moves of all time. Whose idea was it for you to do the DDT?

Jake Roberts: I invented it, so it was mine.

JM: You invented it? How did that happen?

Jake Roberts: Yeah, it was an accident. I was in the ring wrestling. I had a front facelock on a guy. He stepped on my feet and we fell backwards. He went on his head. I went on my back. And the fans went “OOOOHH.” I went, “Wait a minute; I’ve got something here.” And I started working on it, and come with it, and named it after the poison that everybody outlawed. I picked up the paper one day, and the front page was “[DDT] outlawed.” I was like, “Wait a minute. Very cool.” They had … “[DDT] poison to the brain.” I said, “Way cool.”

Talk about a happy accident. A happy, dangerous accident.

It’s crazy to think about how different Jake’s career would’ve been without his signature DDT, and how different pro wrestling would be today if Jake hadn’t innovated and popularized the hold. How much longer would it have taken wrestlers to figure out they can grab somebody by the head and fall backwards? That’s a building block for so many of today’s best moves.

While you think about that, watch this tribute and imagine every single one of them as an accident.

Long before they were a Two-Man Power Trip, Triple H did Stone Cold Steve Austin a solid.

Footage has surfaced of an Attitude Era Triple H coming to the aid of Stone Cold during a random attack from a fan. H takes the randomly occurring jerk to Suplex City, then mounts him from behind and punches and elbows him in the back of the head while referee Mike Chioda lays in some of the stiffest, sickest shots you’ve ever seen. I’m kidding. Chioda looks like Elaine Benes beating up a fan.

The description of the video gives it a wonderful kind of mystery, as it’s from someone with Meet & Greet permission (?) who breaks down the action and gives Iron Mike Chioda a little too much credit.

THIS FOLLOWING VIDEO WAS FILMED BY ME.

I‘VE WON A MEET & GREET + THE PERMISSION TO FILM THE ENTIRE SHOW.

AFTER STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN FINISHED HUNTER HEARST HELMSLEY, A GERMAN FAN ENTERED THE RING AND TRIED TO ATTACK STEVE AUSTIN.

IT SEEMS THAT TRIPLE H WAS NOT VERY IMPRESSED BY AUSTIN‘S STONE COLD STUNNER, MAYBE THAT‘S WHY HE DECIDED TO BEAT UP THE FAN.

BY THE WAY: THE REFEREE IS A BEAST.

Here’s the attack in GIF form.

GIF

Reminder: If you’re a wrestling fan, never run into the ring. I don’t care how drunk you are.

WWE Network

Traumatic brain injuries have been very much on the minds of professional athletes and fans in every avenue of sports over the past few years. A lot of pioneering work in the field of brain injury and study was done by a former pro wrestler, of course — Tough Enough contestant Chris Nowinski, who founded the Sports Legacy Institute. While former NFL players have sued their league for failing to disclose information about brain injuries, similar lawsuits brought against WWE by former wrestlers have had less luck. But that might soon change.

WWE Hall of Fame wrestler Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka is the most notable name in a class action lawsuit being brought against the company by a huge group of former stars, as first reported by Bloomberg. Snuka was most recently in the news when he was deemed unfit to stand trial for the 1983 murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Argentino.

The retired wrestlers say the WWE deliberately ignored and hid from them “medically important and possibly lifesaving information” about specific neurological conditions, such as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, that affect wrestlers and athletes who play contact sports prone to head trauma.

“The WWE knows that its wrestlers including the plaintiffs are at great risk for these diseases such as CTE that can result in suicide, drug abuse and violent behavior that pose a danger to not only the athletes themselves but their families and community, yet the WWE does nothing to warn, educate or provide treatment to them,” the wrestlers said in the suit.

The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against WWE is Road Warrior Animal, a.k.a. Joseph Laurinaitis. The case is officially titled “Laurinaitis v. World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., 3:16-cv-01209” and was filed at the U.S. District Court, in the New Haven District of Connecticut.

The other members of the lawsuit are a veritable who’s who of wrestling across multiple generations.

WWE has issued a statement in response to the lawsuit, which reads as follows:

“This is another ridiculous attempt by the same attorney who has previously filed class action lawsuits against WWE, both of which have been dismissed. A federal judge has already found that this lawyer made patently false allegations about WWE, and this is more of the same. We’re confident this lawsuit will suffer the same fate as his prior attempts and be dismissed.”

Hulu

On Monday, WWE Raw entered a “new era” of programming with new authority figures, a new roster, a new set, new visual presentation, a new announce team and, perhaps most importantly, a new opening theme. It got us thinking about all the songs that’ve opened Raw in the past, so, because we are on the internet, we decided to lay them all out and rank them from worst to best.

These are our choices, and our explanations. If you like the list or disagree with it to the point of wanting to fight us in real life, drop down into our comments section and let us know how you’d rank them. We’re really hoping to get an outpouring of Papa Roach fans in here.

Enjoy!

10. I Like It Raw

Performed By: Jim Johnston
Years Used: part of 1995
Most Aggro Lyric: “No doubt about it, make it a law! I like it raw!”

You probably don’t remember this one, but it’s so bad it made Shawn Michaels want to jump off a building. One part vague Jim Johnston butt rock, one part mid-’90s country, one part Roseanne theme song, “I Like It Raw” was only used for part of 1995 until someone actually listened to it and changed it back.

I do like that the accompanying clip is sort of the precursor to the Attitude Era “walk into the exploding warehouse and start punching people” open. Why is there an illegal, sparsely-attended battle royal happening in the parking lot of an office building, and why is Goldust watching from afar?

9. The Night

Performed By: Kromestatik
Years Used: July 2012 – July 2016
Most Aggro Lyric: “Bright lights, hype crowd, yeah, we came to throw down!”

Can you believe this was the Raw intro theme for four years? The original version of it has CM Punk, Eve Torres and the Funkasaurus in it, and they used this until like last week.

Performed by Kromestatik (Bryan Clark and Bryan Adams) (not really), it’s the kind of limp, non-offensive semi-hip-hop that defined WWE after the Ruthless Aggression era. We want you to get excited, but not too excited. Everybody be very careful!

I think this one ranks low for me because it reminds me of every boring, cookie-cutter Raw from the past few years. It’s like Baron Corbin vs. Dolph Ziggler The Song. In a few years, once the pain has started to fade, I’ll probably bump it up a notch or two.

8. Tonight Is The Night

Performed By: Outasight
Years Used: Raw 1000
Most Aggro Lyric: “Everybody go, wooh wooh ooh ooh ooh, wooh wooh ooh ooh ooh, yeah yeah yeah yeah”

This was used only once, for Raw’s 1000th episode. If you watch the video, you’ll notice there’s an unusual amount of comedy bits and deaths/retirements in the highlight reel. One thousand wrestling shows and 80 percent of your best moments are people dressing up as other people and Mark Henry having sex with old ladies?

That’s this song. “Moments” over content. Nobody listens to this song and hears lyrics, they just hear the “ooh ooh part.” That’s why it’s perfect for the video package, and perfect for celebrating 1000 of something.

7. Enemies

Performed By: Shinedown
Years Used: This Week
Most Aggro Lyric: “You want more; you’ll get nothing from me!”

This one’s new, but we’ve already called it the, “Jimmy Hart version of NXT’s intro.” It thankfully steps away from WWE’s love of bad club music and half-assed hip-hop and gets back to music that’s truly appropriate for pro wrestling: aggro-ass radio rock about how you’re about to get into a fight. IT’S 20 TO ONE, YOU BETTER RUN!

Shinedown is such a perfect pro wrestling band, especially now that Saliva is living on a nice farm upstate where they have a big yard and can run around.

6. Burn It To The Ground

Performed By: Nickelback
Years Used: November 2009 – July 2012
Most Aggro Lyric: “We got no fear, no doubt. All in, balls out!”

Here’s the dilemma.

I wanted to rank this one dead last, because most good-hearted people agree that Nickelback sucks eggs. At the same time, chopped up snippets of threaten-rock Nickelback are pretty perfect for Raw, especially when they’re talking about fearlessly pulling out their balls and setting sh*t on fire. Part of me wants to go back and dub-in “Photograph” over every time WCW showed you stills from the previous night’s pay-per-view instead of video.

The “hey!” parts are the kind of catchy nonsense you want in your open, too. Play the regular version of this song and try not to picture John Cena saluting at the end of it. Can’t be done.

5. The Beautiful People

Performed By: Marilyn Manson
Years Used: a few weeks in 1997
Most Aggro Lyric: “And I don’t want you, and I don’t need you. Don’t bother to resist, or I’ll beat you!”

This one loses points for only being used for a few weeks, then popping up again as the opening theme to Smackdown. Still, nothing says “1997” and “trying too hard to be offensive” quite like Marilyn Manson, and that was pitch-perfect for the new era of WWF programming.

Plus, it gave us our first look at the exploding fire ring warehouse, which would get its much more appropriate and iconic soundtrack within a month.

4. …To Be Loved

Performed By: Papa Roach
Years Used: October 2006 – November 2009
Most Aggro Lyric: “I want domination. I want your submission!”

Like Nickelback, Papa Roach added a bunch of “hey!” and “whoa!” sounds to a song and made it perfect for pro wrestling.

This was recorded during that hilarious period where Papa Roach was a few years removed from the emo nu-metal success of “Last Resort” and had gone Full Buckcherry. Seriously, watch the official video for “…To Be Loved.” He’s got a jet black heart, it’s all f*cked up and falling apart! It’s like Jet and Good Charlotte went on Wife Swap.

Also, how weird is it to hear full versions of these Raw entrance themes? It’s like seeing your teachers outside of school.

3. Across The Nation

Performed By: The Union Underground
Years Used: April 2002 – October 2006
Most Aggro Lyric: “And they refuse to see the change in me, why won’t they wake up?” and/or, simply, “PLAY THAT F*CKIN’ MUSIC”

If you ask anybody under 30 to name their most iconic Raw opening theme, they’ll probably claim this one. A post-Attitude Era WWF creeping out of the Attitude Era but not yet boned by the deaths of Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero wanted you to know that they had bloody faces and naked ladies and hot lesbian action, and that they weren’t afraid to say the F-word! The censored F-word, but they’ll say it a lot.

Funny enough, The Union Underground broke up right around the time this became Raw’s opening theme, but their badly-updated Wikipedia page will tell you that they’re back together and making music again. “Across The Nation ’17,” anybody?

2. Monday Night Raw

Performed By: Jim Johnston
Years Used: 1993-1996, intermittently
Most Aggro Lyric: saxophone

The first Raw theme is still one of the most iconic. It screams pre-Attitude Era WWF, and if you played any of the Super Nintendo games you probably had the MIDI version stuck in your head for years. Definitely a strong No. 2 behind “WrestleMania” as the definitive old school track.

They occasionally bring it back when they do an Old School Raw, and it still works. They could sneak this back in today and people would love it.

1. Thorn In Your Eye/We’re All Together Now

Performed By: WWE Superstars & Slam Jam
Years Used: March 1997 – March 2002
Most Aggro Lyric: who the hell knows, all of them

It had to be this one, didn’t it? One day we’ll find out the real lyrics, which are definitely not the “I’ve seen the donut” version you can on wrestling lyric sites. I’ve always sung SOUL OF BEEF! and I’m not gonna stop now.

The actual best Raw theme ever is the accompanying “We’re All Together Now,” which is a terrible and cornball song with an instrumental that absolutely defines late-’90s wrestling.

Nothing says “STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN AND AHMED JOHNSON WALKED INTO THIS DEADLY WAREHOUSE AND WON’T STOP PUNCHING EACH OTHER” more. Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler should have it playing behind them every time they speak. Classic, and our choice for No. 1.

WWE Network

If you remember the Raw that aired opposite the final episode of WCW Monday Nitro, you might be familiar with the story of Goldust wanting breast implants, but did you know Marlena almost had a fake penis?

On a recent episode of The Ross Report, Terri Runnels aka Marlena spoke about the creative meeting that almost ended with her character having a “very subtle” prosthetic penis. Because “very subtle” and “female wrestling valet in 1995 with a dildo down the front of her dress” are pretty much interchangeable.

Transcription help via Wrestling Inc.:

“I remember having creative meetings, Vince and I, probably Pat [Patterson] and maybe Bruce, Bruce Prichard. And having meetings of various kinds. One meeting, a creative meeting, we had about [the Marlena] character, was that there was a consideration to have the Marlena character have a prosthetic penis and that the penis would be, at certain times, depending on what [Marlena] wore, in a very subtle way, one could detect that there’s something going on there that is not normal.”

The Attitude Era eventually kicked in and Goldust ended up in metal boobs, a thong and a ball gag while being led around on a chain leash, so you can only wonder how long the Marlena penis — the Marlenis? — would’ve stayed subtle. That retroactively feels like a Val Venis gay panic angle waiting to happen.

Via gofundme

George Gray, aka The One Man Gang, aka my forever problematic fave Akeem the African Dream, needs your help. The pro wrestling legend is one of millions affected by the devastating floods in Louisiana, after what’s being called the worst disaster in the United States since Superstorm Sandy. According to Gray, FEMA declared his neighbourhood a “no flood zone” and thus they did not have flood insurance, nor will their insurance company be covering any of the damages. Now he finds himself unable to recover what his family has lost on his own.

Recently, as many of you know, The Great Flood of ’16 came and smashed into Southern Louisiana where our family home for 25 years in Central, LA received 4′ of water inside it. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to do a 747 Splash and send that water back up the street crying for its momma. Thankfully though our son was house sitting while I was in Georgia doing a meet n greet signing & was able to save all 8 cats, 2 dogs & a lizard. However almost everything my wife & I ever owned was ruined.

All the beds, couches, appliances, electronics, clothes, basically everything in the entire house was destroyed while submerged for 3 days. A lifetime of wrestling memorabilia, wrestling videos & family albums were among the most irreplaceable.

You can donate to his GoFundMe relief fund here, as well as view more updates on his current situation.

Click here to find out more on how you can help the people and pets recovering from the Louisiana Floods.

WWE Network

Sad news from the world of professional wrestling today as Harry Fujiwara, best known as legendary WWE Hall of Fame wrestler and manager Mr. Fuji, has passed away at age 82.

Via WWE.com:

Fuji spent over 30 years entertaining fans worldwide as both an in-ring competitor and one of WWE’s greatest managers … Fuji was infamous for keeping small bags of salt in his tights which he would throw into his opponents’ eyes.

After retiring from the ring, Fuji managed a litany of WWE’s most feared Superstars, such as George “The Animal” Steele, Kamala, Killer Khan, Demolition, The Powers of Pain, Yokozuna and most notably, “Magnificent” Don Muraco.

While Fuji is best known for his managerial work during the wrestling boom period of the 1980s, it should also be noted that he was a 5-time WWWF/WWF Tag Team Champion, three times with Toru Tanaka and twice with Mr. Saito. In fact, Fuji’s career began all the way back in 1964 in his native Hawaii as “Mr. Fujiwara,” and he captured his first wrestling championship in 1966.

We send our love and condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Fuji, and recommend that instead of pouring one out for him today, you throw salt in the face of someone you hate.

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: Bret Hart complained about his unfair treatment at the Royal Rumble and quit until Gorilla Monsoon made a four-way #1 contender match for the upcoming In Your House pay-per-view. Also, Raw got really defensive about La Femme Nikita being a more masculine post-wrestling Monday night show than The New Adventures of Robin Hood. I dunno.

You can watch this week’s episode here, and check all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to tell us what you think about the maneuvers, quite frankly.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for Jan. 27, 1997.

WWE Network

Worst: The Ahmed Johnson Vs. The Nation Of Domination Story Drags On

If you’ve been following along with our semi-weekly retro column, you know that Ahmed Johnson’s endless war with the pre-Crisis Nation of Domination is the most boring story of 1996, the most boring story of 1997, and at least as boring as anything happening after that. It boils down to Faarooq calling Ahmed an Uncle Tom, Ahmed trying to attack him with a freestanding wooden board, and everyone kicking Ahmed in the kidneys for like two years. Then, before Ahmed can actually get revenge on anyone, he gives up and joins them. And you wonder why nobody still likes Ahmed Johnson?

We open this week with Ahmed going one-on-one with Crush. I feel like Crush could’ve wrestled Ric Flair in 1989 and Flair would’ve potatoed him for not being as good as a broomstick. They do nothing more athletic than a clubbing forearm for about four minutes until the referee gets distracted and tosses Ahmed into the ring steps, allowing Crush to connect with his deadly ARMPIT PUNCH and score the victory.

This is one of three (3) Ahmed Johnson vs. The Nation of Domination segments in this one-hour program.

WWE Network

Worst: The Ahmed Johnson Vs. The Nation Of Domination Story Is Still Dragging On

At the end of the night, the Nation is collectively piling their sh*t into a rental car when Ahmed comes jogging out into the parking lot with his board and attacks them. He ends up stuffing one of PG-13 into the trunk and tries to Brock Lesnar the car with his 2-by-4, but dude is legit slower than Actual Jim Duggan and whiffs as they drive away. This is all Very Important.

Best: If You’re Wondering Why Ahmed Johnson Is So Saucy

Somewhere in the middle of the show, we jump to footage from the previous weekend’s Madison Square Garden show in which Ahmed teamed up with Savio Vega against, you guessed it, the Nation of Domination. Ahmed’s about to win the match but Vega demands a tag, and when Ahmed wanders over to tag him, Vega turns on him and chokes him across the top rope.

On Shotgun Saturday Night, Vega explains that he had a “real bad day” (see the graphic?), didn’t actually join the Nation of Domination and will never let the fans down again. Then he has a match, the Nation of Domination shows up to salute him at ringside, and they all end up ganging up and beating down Vega’s opponent.

Who was that opponent, you might ask?

WWE Network

The Rock. A year later, this beatdown would come back around and be very bad for Faarooq. Funny how that works out sometimes.

WWE Network

Worst: Vince McMahon Joins The Horsemen

I’m kidding. But that would’ve been way more interesting than the sh*t Nitro’s doing with Mongo and Jeff Jarrett.

Best: Your Weekly “Stone Cold Steve Austin Is Cooler Than The Rest Of These Jokers” Segment

Shawn Michaels, who is about two weeks away from “losing his smile” and vacating the WWF Championship due to “injury” in really gigantic quotation marks, walks to the ring with a 100 percent operational leg and assures us that he’s going to give Sid a title shot at the upcoming Thursday Raw Thursday and be champion for a long time. Bret Hart shows up to say he’s going to win the #1 contender match at Final Four and face Shawn at WrestleMania, which causes Vince to get in his face all weird and be like, “HEY BRET YOU ARE UNDERESTIMATING SYCHO SID MAYBE SID WILL WIN AND YOU’LL FACE SID, RIGHT?” Bret’s like, “oh, I might also wrestle Sid but I’m DEFINITELY wrestling Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania.” Shawn’s kneecap thinks to itself, “I should probably say I’m hurt.”

Vince then brings out the Undertaker, who says that he will NO LONGER BE THE HUNTED, HE WILL BECOME THE HUNTER, and whatever else you’d type in an e-fed promo about your Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse character who wrestles in baggy pants with flames on them.

That brings out Stone Cold Steve Austin. Austin says everybody in the ring should stop being a bunch of crybabies and shut up. Again, isn’t it super hard to understand why he became the most popular guy on the show?

They tease him and Vader getting into it as he leaves, but Vader just stands there doing and saying nothing, which is the perfect illustration of WWF Vader. In Your House: Final Four goes down in just slightly over two weeks, and I’m sure everyone’s legs in this segment will be fine!

WWE Network

Best: Owen Hart’s Nike Snowsuit

Davey Boy Smith has a competently wrestled but pretty boring match with Doug Furnas, but the highlight is absolutely Owen Hart showing up looking like a cross between Ahmed Johnson, JBL and Stupid Sexy Flanders. Dude’s out here in a forest green and white Nike … what is that, a snowsuit? With the towel around his neck tucked into the jacket. That’s such a spectacular old man look.

The match actually gets pretty good at the end with some fun counters, and Owen accidentally Slammy’ing Davey Boy in the face for a nearfall. Bulldog eventually counters a sunset flip with the Bret Hart Memorial SummerSlam Clutch and wins. They tease some dissension between Owen and Bulldog, but cooler heads prevail, they shake hands, and nobody attacks anybody with a board.

WWE Network

Worst: Vader Losing To The Goddamn Godwinns

Speaking of being attacked with bored, here are the Godwinns!

They main-event this episode against Mankind and Vader, and as you can see by the screenshot and the angry boldface, it doesn’t end well. Vader and Henry O. end up tumbling to the outside and Mankind tries to plaster Henry with a chairshot, but misses and hits Vader. Well, “misses.” Henry dodges super early, and Mankind still just kinda runs forward and blatantly chairshots Vader anyway. This appears to be on purpose, and is kinda sorta another illustration of how important and threatening everyone thinks Vader is.

Unbelievably, that’s the entire show. Three Ahmed Johnson segments, the Godwinns defeating one of the guys main-eventing In Your House, seven minutes of British Bulldog chinlocks and a lot of top guy posturing that never pays off.

Two more weeks until Thursday Raw Thursday, everybody!

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: … uh, not much! We’re continuing our slow, inevitable slog toward Thursday Raw Thursday — the episode where everything changes — and the best we’ve done so far is Savio Vega joining the Nation of Domination, three nonconsecutive Ahmed Johnson Is Angry segments and Mankind accidentally hitting Vader with a chair, but not really accidentally.

You can watch this week’s episode here, and check all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to tell us what you think about the maneuvers, quite frankly.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for Feb. 3, 1997.

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Worst: Royal Rumble Raw

So, here’s what you need to know.

On last week’s episode, Vince McMahon announced that this would be “Royal Rumble Raw,” and that for the first time since the ’80s, fans would get to see an entire Royal Rumble match for free on TV. USA Network was hype about it and gave them two hours to show the whole thing. The pay-per-view market was still a big deal back then, though, so cable companies were pissed. They freaked out and threatened lawsuits, so at the last minute WWF had to back out of the Rumble promise and, whoops, were left with two hours of empty primetime.

The solution? Air footage from the Toronto house show that’d happened a few days earlier, dub over it with some commentary and show a bunch of “Royal Rumble highlights.” So what you’re left with is two hours of Vince McMahon and Dok Hendrix screaming over the fuzziest, darkest and most boring house show footage ever. Oh, and Raw is now suddenly two hours without any announcement or fanfare. Next week the show is on a Thursday, because reasons.

Yay?

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This is what most of the show looks like. It’s like trying to have a wrestling show during the ending of [REC].

The announcing is hilarious here, with Vince McMahon calling the roughly half-full Skydome a “capacity crowd” and going on and on about how WWF doesn’t do “bait-and-switch” tactics like Nitro. Keep in mind that this is the guy who died in an exploding limousine only to come back to life a couple weeks later speaking. Also, he’s dubbing over “we don’t do bait-and-switches” commentary on a taped show. What, are you gonna go in and CGI-in a Crush run-in for the main? Is there a Savio Vega hologram running around I don’t know about?

The opening match is Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Vader, which begins with Bret Hart running in to fight Austin and ends with Austin stunning the referee for no reason. HOUSE SHOW in capital letters with lights and flashing arrows around it.

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Best: Militant Jim Ross

The best visual of the entire episode is heel Savio Vega walking to the ring in a Silent Bob trench coat, flanked by the Nation of Domination, with cowboy-ass nesting doll Jim Ross serpentine weaving his way through them to get an interview. Also, the Nation of Domination really should’ve been called the “Nation of I Slam.”

Worst: Savio Vega

In Your House: Actual House Show continues with SAVIO VEGA DARK taking on Flash Funk, who is still dressing like a rubber chicken. To give you an idea of how impactful and effective this match is, it ends when Funk misses a moonsault and Vega just covers him or three. Flash Funk loses to Savio Vega via defense.

After the match, progressive thinker Ahmed Johnson discusses the mental-health epidemic:

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I love that they managed to change Ahmed Johnson’s character from “enraged simpleton monster” to “possibly mentally and physically handicapped guy who is off his meds and won’t stop running at people and trying to hit them with a board.”

They should’ve changed the name of the Pearl River Plunge to the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. Or like, teamed him with Vader, who is clearly the most depressed dude on the roster.

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Best/Worst: Sid Over-explains A Roller Coaster

Next week, on the flagship show of the promotion that would never bait-and-switch you, Sycho Sid challenges Shawn Michaels for the WWF Championship. Here, Sid shows up to cut a weirdly long promo that is supposed to put the fear of God in Michaels, but mostly just explains how roller coasters work.

I’m paraphrasing, but:

[Jimmy Hart-style rip-off Psycho music] “YOU HEARD SHAWN MICHAELS SAY THAT OUR RELATIONSHIP IS A ROLLER COASTER, PHYSICALLY MENTALLY EMOTIONALLY AND SOCIALLY. OUR RELATIONSHIP IS LITERALLY A ROLLER COASTER. PEOPLE SIT ON OUR FRIENDSHIP AND RIDE IT FOR FUN AT AMUSEMENT PARKS. AND WHEN THE ROLLER COASTER IS DONE GOING UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN, AND THEN THE ROLLER COASTER STOPS, AND THE PEOPLE GET OFF THE ROLLER COASTER, THEN SHAWN MICHAELS YOU WILL SEE THAT I AM THE MASTER AND THE RULER OF THE ROLLER COASTER. I MEAN, THE WORLD.”

I want to remake My Dinner With Andre with Sid and Ahmed.

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Best: Owen Hart

There’s not much better than Owen Hart at a house show.

Here, Owen teams up with the British Bulldog against Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon, who they’ve been wrestling for weeks. This one is fun and echoes the Raw matches, with Owen and Bulldog trying to cheat a bunch but ultimately just getting frustrated with one another. If Furnas or LaFon had had personalities instead of being assembled at the Dean Malenko Emotional Robot Factory they could’ve capitalized.

Anyway, the finish comes when Bulldog accidentally backdrops Owen out of the ring, and Owen goes down with a knee injury. This gets him counted out and they lose, but here’s the fun part: every time Bulldog isn’t looking, Owen is fine. He hobbles around on the outside, Bulldog gets distracted and he just jogs down the aisle. When Bulldog shows up again, Owen’s clutching his leg and doing big dramatic “time out” gestures. They shake hands and he tells Bulldog to lead the way to the back, and when Bulldog does, Owen turns and throws his arms up and hops up and down with a, “woo!”

Owen was the greatest. He’s like Bret Hart, minus 20 years of thinking wrestling is real.

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Worst: Crush

The opposite of Owen Hart is Crush. I think it’s time that we cut the bullsh*t, come together as a people and agree that Crush is the worst wrestler ever. Hacksaw Jim Duggan is Kenta Kobashi compared to Crush.

Goldust tries to get a good match out of him, but all Crush can do is stand still, awkwardly stomp, stand still, awkwardly stomp, then do a weird almost Glacier-like karate pose before throwing a straight “strike” to the kidneys or whatever that lands with the impact of a butterfly landing on a f*cking leaf. This guy took Ox Baker’s finish, a move that killed dudes and started riots, and turned it into and exaggerated baby-punch to the armpit.

Goldust succumbs to one of these after Savio Vega phones in from Zion and spin kicks him in the back of the head while the ref is distracted. Basically WWF house shows were like episodes of Guy’s Grocery Games, where everyone had to wrestle with the sabotage, “ref distraction.”

But yeah, f*ck Crush. He made David Flair look like Ric.

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Worst: The Blackjacks Will Ride Again!

In a short vignette that looks like one of the “has this ever happened to YOU” parts of an infomercial about arthritis medication, Blackjack Lanza sits around a campfire telling the story of the NEW Blackjacks, and how they’re gonna ride again, “hard and fast.” The story he’s trying to tell is actually closer to, “what would happen if Justin Hawk Bradshaw and The Stalker dyed their mustaches black?”

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yeah, no kidding

Worst: Check His Knee And His Smile

The next segment on the show advertised as “Royal Rumble Raw” and promised to show you the entire Royal Rumble and ended up showing you a house show instead that swears to God they’d never bait-and-switch you is an interview with WWF Champion Shawn Michaels. As he’s walking to the ring, Jim Ross assures us that Shawn “isn’t making promises he can’t keep,” and at Thursday Raw Thursday Shawn Michaels promises you he’s going to put the title on the line against Sid. This show’s so full of bait-and-switch it should’ve just been two hours of a dom and a sub fishing.

Shawn compares himself to Muhammad Ali here, saying that everybody hated Ali when he was champion, but now they call him The Greatest. Bret Hart shows up and goes full Cutthroat Canadian Dad From The ’90s on him:

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The best part is how Bret pronounces “Muhammad Ali.” Mo-HAMMIN’-alley??

As per usual, Stone Cold Steve Austin shows up and throws hands at Bret for attacking him earlier in the night. While they’re brawling on the outside, Sycho Sid returns and stares Michaels down. We cut to a break, and when we come back, Shawn is doing that “line in the sand” thing with the WWF Championship at Bret’s feet. When Bret doesn’t budge, Shawn tries to pick up the belt and Bret puts his foot on it. So awesome. Bret tosses the belt to Shawn and flips him off to the happy clapping hands of 25,000-ish Canadians.

Isn’t it a totally weird coincidence that Shawn Michaels “lost his smile” immediately after this Raw in Canada, where Bret Hart got cheered over him and made him look like a punk? What a crazy coincidence!

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Worst: Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit The Jackpot

This living Eric Wareheim character is Tiger Ali Singh, son of famous Indian wrestling legend Tiger Jeet Singh. WWF announced his signing at a press conference at the Skydome. Yes, he looks like Brother Love had sex with Billy Ray Cyrus.

If you don’t remember his WWF career, here’s the entire thing: He won the second (and final) Kuwait Cup Tournament, disappeared, came back as a racist Million Dollar Man and then managed D’Lo Brown and Headbanger Mosh in turbans until he got injured and slurred and had to retire. It was a low down, dirty shame.

Best, Comparatively: Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Marc Mero, Again

Triple H watching this year’s BOLA like:

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This is match 18 in the best of 19 series between Hunter Hearst Helmsley and “Wildman” Marc Mero, with Sable and Mr. Hughes “banned from the Skydome.” Maybe that’s where the Brock Lesnar and Canada beef actually began. You think Mr. Hughes ever tries to go to Blue Jays games and gets turned away?

It’s good in the same way the tag match is good, which is, “passable mid-’90s WWF-style matches that don’t have Crush in them.” Helmsley has to figure out a way to cheat without the Big Cat at ringside, so he removes a turnbuckle pad and uses it as a red herring to pull an International Object out of his boot and pop Mero in the face with it for the win. Something something house show, something something bait-and-switch.

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Worst: Bait, Meet Switch

Okay, so after an entire double-episode devoted to how they’d never bait-and-switch you, how do you think the advertised “no holds barred” main event of the Undertaker and Ahmed Johnson vs. Faarooq and Mankind plays out?

Somewhere in the middle of the match, Ahmed Johnson leaves the ring and chases Clarence Mason to the back, leaving The Undertaker alone to battle the heels 2-on-1. Mason reemerges with the rest of the Nation, so Ahmed kinda rejoins the match, spending most of it on the outside fighting off the entire faction. Eventually he leaves again, chasing Faarooq to the back with his 2×4. It’s important to note that per the Royal Rumble and this segment, Ahmed “hitting you with a 2 by 4” means he spins it around a bunch like he’s Morgan on The Walking Dead and then just kinda touches it to your lower back.

So yeah, that leaves us with the totally not baited or switched main event of The Undertaker vs. Mankind, one-on-one … well, except a run-in from VADER, technically the third man to run-in on the match. Vader splashes Undertaker and incapacitates him, then for some magical reason decides to order Mankind to pick him back up and hold him for a chairshot. Any deaf and blind people out there unable to guess what happens next? No? Undertaker moves, Vader “accidentally” hits Mankind with the chair instead, and Taker takes out both dudes to win the match. After the match, Ahmed returns and chases Undertaker to the back with a 2 by 4. I’m kidding, but barely.

Next Week:

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We finally make it to the Fireworks Factory.

If you’ve never seen this show, you’re in for a wonderful lesson in how history can be rewritten and reshaped by the craziest things. The WWF Champion decides he doesn’t want to be the WWF Champion anymore, changing the course of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s trajectory forever. The Intercontinental Championship changes hands, and the backlash from that transforms one of the least interesting characters on the show into one of the biggest stars in the world. The old WWF starts to say goodbye, and the new one says hello.

Also the Headbangers show up, but they aren’t wearing turbans yet, so it’s fine.

See you next week for Different Day Raw Different Day!

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: We got the ill-fated “Royal Rumble Raw,” where Vince wanted to show the Rumble match in its entirety, people got mad, and USA Network ended up with two hours of grainy house show footage where nothing happened and everything ended in a run-in. This week, we make up for that.

You can watch this week’s episode here, and check all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our Section Comments Section to let us know what you think about the show.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Thursday Raw Thursday for Feb. 13, 1997.

Before We Begin

Despite them saying “Thursday Raw Thursday” about 60,000 times in the first five minutes of the show, the episode’s formal title — if we’re going by the graphic, at least — is, “Thursday Raw! Thursday Live!” Wrestles on contingency? No, money down!

If you’re wondering why Raw is happening on Thursday, there are two good reasons:

1. Nitro was pulling Raw’s pants down and spray-painting it in the ratings, so WWF was trying a two-hour Thursday show that could run unopposed, get more eyes on the product and kinda-sorta test the waters for a permanent move away from what at this point had become a years-long brow-beating.

2. USA Network preempted the episode because a bunch of really nice-looking dogs were having a tennis tournament.

Here’s the good news: after almost a year of doing these columns and typing, “wait until we get to Thursday Raw Thursday, that’s when Raw finally starts feeling like Raw,” we’re finally there.

Best: Aw Here It Goes

So what does that mean? “Raw finally starts feeling like Raw?”

Well, here’s Triple H being referred to as “cerebral” …

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… and there’s the first time The Rock talks about “the people.”

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This week’s opener is about 15 minutes (!) of Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Rocky Maivia, aka Triple H vs. The Rock, a rivalry that’s still pretty much continuing in some form or another to this day. The match is built around Hunter clearly being the better wrestler but lacking a “killer instinct” and refusing to put Rocky away when he’s got him beat, and Rocky catching him in a small package and pinning him to win his first Intercontinental Championship.

There’s so much going on here that affects where these characters go in the future, and how they become big stars. Having a “killer instinct” is sort of Triple H’s defining characteristic, isn’t it? I don’t know if I can explain it as eloquently as Max Landis and 25 minutes of models, but Triple H has been eternally motivated by his belief that he’s the very best wrestler ever, even if nobody — including himself — truly believes it. He faked it until he made it, then kept faking it when he didn’t have to for like 20 years.

A lot of that comes from this early, enduring rivalry with Rocky Maivia, a dorky Blue Chipper with pineapple hair who f*cks around and ends up arguably WWE’s biggest star ever and also the richest, most beloved and most handsome celebrity in the world. It’s such a lasting blow to his (at least fictionalized) self-esteem. It just keeps going, and keeps getting worse. Rock’s like, “hey, no, it’s fine, I’ll show up to WrestleMania and wave, I gotta get back to my Fast & Furious movies that make a billion dollars each.” Triple H is like, “I LOVE THIS BUSINESS, LOOK AT THIS INSTAGRAM OF ME AND KEVIN OWENS.” It’s great.

Also, this is the beginning of EVERYTHING for The Rock. Raw needed something “shocking” to open the unopposed Thursday show, so they had Rock take the IC title only a few days before Helmsley was scheduled to defend it at Final Four. The crowd here loves it, but as the weeks and months go on, WWF crowds stop buying this hokey, awkward dude winning and smiling all the time and turn on him to the point of chanted death threats. That turns him into The Rock. If Raw hadn’t been aired on Thursday and Vince hadn’t needed something shocking to happen, Rocky wouldn’t have won the Intercontinental Championship here, and (in theory) wouldn’t have been pushed down fans’ throats hard enough for them to want him to die. Triple H would’ve just defended the belt against Ahmed Johnson at Final Four, and the Triple H vs. Rock rivalry wouldn’t have started. Everything would be different.

Get ready for this speech again later in the column when we talk about Shawn Michaels. Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin. It’s crazy how important this, “whoops, let’s call an audible”-ass Raw is to the future and identity of the World Wrestling Federation.

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Best: Sunny

Sunny doesn’t have much to do these days, but (1) she’s actually on this episode, and (2) she’s ring announcing in what looks like somebody’s work undershirt stretched into a dress, so I’m giving it a Best. She can’t find her notes and realizes she left them in her bra, and Vince McMahon has a Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite moment where he travels space and time through a corridor of bra and panties matches, kiddie pools full of gravy and the Miller Lite catfight girls headlining a WrestleMania.

Worst: The Head Bangers

Sisters of Love no more!

Brother Love’s crossdressing pun nun tag team have been repackaged as “The Head Bangers,” one of the most comically notable and forever illogical tag teams of the Attitude Era. First of all, nobody involved in this knows what headbanging is, or what it’s supposed to look like. Instead of two dudes with long hair, whipping it around, we got THESE goobers:

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Yes, the Head Bangers are two completely bald guys in kilts who NEVER HEADBANG. They don’t have any clue how to do it. Their version of it is to remain perfectly still, then SUDDENLY SKANK, then suddenly stop. It’s supposed to look like they’re moshing, but the closest they ever get is the Milli Vanilli chest bump. Eventually they start wearing Madonna cone bras. You know, just like Metallica did for their Ride The Lightning tour.

Anyway, the garbage-ass Head Bangers face the only team in the world that could make them look great: Bob “Sparky Plugg” Holly and Aldo “Euthanasia Suddenly Makes Sense” Montoya. The Head Bangers get the win with their finisher, which is supposed to be a powerbomb/leg drop combo but gets horribly mis-timed so it’s a powerbomb and Aldo getting kicked in the temple. Join us again in 19 years when these f*ckers are still wrestling.

Worst: Tell Me A Lie

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

Thursday Raw Thursday opens with a somber video package announcing that due to injury — that sound you hear is everyone who has ever watched wrestling suddenly coughing in unison — Shawn Michaels will be giving up the WWF Championship instead of facing Sid for it as advertised. WWF would NEVER bait-and-switch you like Nitro!

A little ways into the show, we get Vince McMahon and Gorilla Monsoon in the ring looking like a dad and a principal at a parent/teacher conference. They break the news to the live crowd and bring out Shawn, who gets what feels like half an hour to shovel the most rank bullsh*t you’ve ever heard on a wrestling show. The short version: he’s injured, but also wrestling just isn’t any fun for him anymore, and now that he’s rich and got to do all the cool rich guy stuff he dreamed about when he was little, he has to go “find himself” and his LOST SMILE instead of taking a f*cking powerbomb.

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If you’re reading this and you’re like, “c’mon, Shawn Michaels is great, I’m sure he was going through some tough personal stuff and needed to step away to heal himself” or whatever, keep in mind that this happens a week after Raw went to Canada and Shawn got booed while Bret Hart stood on his championship and made him look like a total chump.

For confirmation of that, Shawn’s goodbye speech about how much wrestling has meant to him makes a point to mention all the people who’ve been getting cheered over him.

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Wrestling isn’t fun for Shawn anymore because OTHER PEOPLE WHO AREN’T SHAWN MICHAELS ARE DOING WELL. He tries to say that all those other guys getting cheered over him is great for the future, because that’ll be great for WWF fans, but yeah, Shawn Michaels is the present but Bret Hart, Sid and the Undertaker are the future? What a great group of scrappy Young Boys!

The speech on its own is intensely up its own ass, but extra insufferable if you factor in the previous several months of Shawn growing visibly bothered by not being the coolest and most popular guy on the show, and the fact that he shows up again a few months later after WrestleMania season is over. You see, all signs were pointing toward Shawn defending the title against Bret Hart at WrestleMania 13 and, in theory, returning that forever-tainted-in-my-brain Mania 12 victory. But instead of Shawn losing to Bret — or even losing to Sid here, to set up a Shawn vs. Bret match where he’d still have to lose but not lose a title — Shawn takes a knee.

Like The Rock’s IC title win, this changes everything. It looked like Stone Cold Steve Austin was being positioned as Bret’s first post-Mania challenger for the title, but there was no way they were gonna give Austin the belt then, and things might’ve been completely different for him. Instead, Austin/Hart gets bumped up to Mania, they put on an undisputed five-star match featuring some of the most iconic imagery in WWE history, a double-turn happens and Austin spends the next year skyrocketing to the main event of WrestleMania 14. Against, uh, Shawn Michaels. And if the Austin vs. Hart Foundation story doesn’t happen, Austin vs. Owen doesn’t happen either, and Austin doesn’t get his neck broken. That directly changes the character as we knew it in its prime, as that was always Austin’s one true spot of vulnerability. Shawn bailing makes Bret paranoid and gets him playing politics, demanding story changes like Owen Hart and the British Bulldog retaining the Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania to make the Hart Foundation angle better, and all the weird pieces start to fall into place for what goes down in Montreal at the end of the year. If Vince doesn’t screw Bret, Vince doesn’t become “Mr. McMahon” and Steve Austin never gets the rival he needs to become the biggest star in the world. Austin and Rock don’t headline three WrestleManias, because Austin isn’t Austin and Rock isn’t Rock.

EVERYTHING is different, and it’s all for want of a smile.

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Look at that face. He’s doing the math in his head.

So, what does Bret Hart think of this?

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Same.

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Best: LOL Bret, Or
Worst: The Nation Of Domination Won’t Stop Being Terrible

The announce team interviews Bret via picture-in-picture during an Owen and Bulldog vs. the Nation match, and it’s a combination of the world’s greatest “bitch, please” faces and diplomatic dialogue ever. Bret is like, “we’re all worse for the loss of Shawn Michaels, nobody works harder than Shawn Michaels, I hope he’s back soon but if he hung up his boots for good we wish him the best in his future endeavors.” And in his face, he’s like, “I WISH A MOTHERF*CKER WOULD.” It’s GREAT.

The match is the opposite of that, because Crush could’ve stood 50 feet from Bret/Austin at WrestleMania and turned it into sh*t by proxy. It’s the same story as last week, with Owen faking a knee injury (cough) to get out of having to defend his championship (COUGH). Man, did Shawn get the idea for avoiding Bret by watching Owen?

Sadly this isn’t even the only terrible Nation segment of the week. Was there ever only one?

Undertaker wrestles Savio Vega, and the highlight is Taker going for a Fame-Asser out of nowhere and just kinda Banzai Dropping Savio’s entire spine. Look at this:

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That’s seriously the best moment.

Undertaker wins with a chokeslam, causing the entire Nation of Domination to nWo their lousy asses into the ring and attack him. He’s saved by (get this) Ahmed Johnson, who forgot his wooden board backstage but brought DEADLY KARATE KICKS. Ahmed and Undertaker clear the ring of several tiny white guys in giant jackets, but there’s still some animosity between them, because they’ve got attitudes and WWF faces are generally just time-displaced 5-year olds in their underpants who are constantly seeing other people for the first time in their lives.

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Best: Thursday Raw Thursday Is Brought To You By Union Western Union

It’s the day before Valentine’s Day, so Jerry Lawler sends money to his mother via Western Union (so she can have enough money to buy him a Valentine’s Day present). Western Union is the fastest way to send money! Man, Western Union finding out Venmo exists must’ve been like when travel agents realized what an Internet was.

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Best: So, Back To Bret

After Shawn Michaels loses his smile and Jerry Lawler Wester Unions 200 bucks to a teen so she can buy a train ticket or whatever, Gorilla Monsoon announces that the #1 contender match at Final Four will now be for the WWF Championship. It’s the “only fair” thing he can think to do, which hilariously leaves Sid just kinda standing around with his dick in his hand despite having signed a contract for his WWF Championship rematch tonight. Note: It works out okay for him.

Anyway, Sid ends up wrestling Stone Cold Steve Austin instead of Shawn Michaels, and they have a shockingly good match until Bret runs in and starts punching and headbutting Austin for no reason. Well, it looked like he was going for a Sharpshooter during the match, so maybe that was it. Nothing Bret’s afraid of more than someone else doing a Sharpshooter to him, am I right folks?

Sid takes exception to Bret’s interference, and they super telegraph the eventual Bret vs. Sid match that happens the night after Final Four. Hey, they’re figuring this out on the fly on a Thursday, we’ll cut them some slack.

Bret ends up main-eventing the episode against Vader (sorry, Sid!), and Austin tries to return the favor by showing up in the balcony and distracting him. It works for a minute — Vader’s able to gain an advantage and go for a moonsault — but the moonsault misses, and Vader eats sh*t. Bret covers him, gets the three, and makes Austin even madder. So mad, in fact, that he tries to CLIMB OVER THE RAILING AND JUMP ON HIM FROM LIKE FIFTY FEET AWAY ON A BALCONY.

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And that’s where we end Raw. To recap:

1. Rocky Maivia is the new Intercontinental Champion, which sets into motion the story that turns him into The Rock, help substantiate Triple H’s lifelong inferiority complex and cause a totally unnecessary title change on Nitro in response (more on that later).

2. Shawn Michaels has vacated the WWF Championship and is totally retired, because sadness.

3. Shawn’s temp retirement speeds up the Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin story, giving them a WrestleMania classic they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise and causing the match that double-turns them, turns Austin into a colossal tweener star and makes Bret seem like a total paranoid jerk. MONTREAL COMIN’.

4. Final Four is now incredibly important, as the four-way is now for the WWF Championship, and what happens there will shape the now malleable-as-f*ck WrestleMania 13 card.

5. Western Union is the fastest way to send money.

Every Raw after this is this important, right?

Via Imgur

“[My dog and I] watch wrestling together and I wanted to combine two things that provide me with endless hours of entertainment. Sewing is how I bridged that gap. His costumes are tailored to fit. Have had great responses from people who wouldn’t call themselves wrestling fans but do know who he’s supposed to be. Just want to add to the positive experience the sport is. And since everyone loves dogs, here it is.”

While our personal favorite has to be Hacksaw Jim Puggan (that triflin’-ass, cheating-ass dog), the whole set is pure gold. Take, for example, Rowdy Roddy Pupper. Don’t let this dog near Morton Downey Jr. any time soon or else he might pee on his leg:

Via Imgur

And of course, how could we overlook the Puppertaker. Just look at that whole set: The urn, the demonic symbol, the purple tie and booties, and even the perfectly undead look upon the dog’s face. Move over, Doug the Pug: There’s a new dog in town.

Via Imgur

You can see the rest of the gallery (including a killer Macho Man Randy Savage costume) here. And even better: you can also follow along with this pup on Instagram. missroseblood promises future photoshoots with her pug dressed up as Goldust, Kane and more; might we suggest a Seth Rollins tribute at some point? The dude loves his canine companions. And would a request for Dog Ziggler be too on the nose?

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: It was Thursday Raw Thursday, the episode that changed everything. Rocky Maivia pinned Triple H to win the Intercontinental Championship despite being lukewarm whole milk and greener than goose-sh*t. WCW were the only people who thought it was a good idea, so they copied it. Also on the show, Shawn Michaels dealt with a Canadian house show where Bret Hart got cheered more than him by quitting the company in tears and giving up the WWF Championship. Coming soon: WOO HOO, PUPPIES.

If you’ve never seen In Your House: Final Four, you can watch it on WWE Network here. You can watch this week’s episode here, and check all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you think about the show.

Up first, let’s see what happens when you let these weirdos into your house.

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Before We Begin

Here’s what you need to know about In Your House (13): Final Four. The Final Four are Stone Cold Steve Austin, Bret Hart, Duke and Villanova.

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Look Out, It’s ‘That Amazon Woman’

Rocky Maivia retains the Intercontinental Championship thanks to a distraction from Goldust. The important moment here comes after the match, when an “Amazon woman” chinlocks Marlena from the crowd and tries to crush her trachea and most of the lower half of her head with her bicep.

As you might’ve guessed, that character who looks like someone put young Elvis Presley’s face on Bill Kazmaier’s body is Chyna, and without Chyna, Triple H never becomes a thing. Without her, he’s WWF’s also-ran Lord Steven Regal, minus the skill, experience or physical charisma and had what was left of his heat killed when he lost to the new guy nobody likes. WITH Chyna, H completely changes directions, ending up alongside a smiling Shawn Michaels in D-Generation X and causing the World Wrestling Federation to be more like ECW. That unofficially starts the Attitude Era, which helps the WWF turn the corner in the ratings war. Three years after this, Triple H is in the main event of a WrestleMania. He’s also in an angle where he’s married to Stephanie McMahon, which leads to him ACTUALLY marrying Stephanie McMahon, which positions him to be in charge of a huge chunk of WWE in real life. Fast forward 20 years and he’s the the Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events and Creative of WWE and a 14-time World Champion main-eventing WrestleMania in front of over 100,000 people. Thanks, Chyna!

Here’s to years of writing about fireworks bazookas, GED study sessions and having your thumb broken with a hammer.

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Vader’s Face Exploded

The main event of Final Four — Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart vs. The Undertaker vs. The Man We Call Vader Because THEY Call Him Vader in an elimination match for the WWF Championship, where you can win by pinfall, submission or throwing your opponent over the top rope Royal Rumble-style — is probably one of the most underrated pay-per-view main-events ever. If you’ve never seen it, seek it out. They brawl for almost 20 minutes before anyone’s eliminated.

The highlight is the effort from Vader, who takes an early chairshot that pretty much explodes his entire eyeball. Vader doesn’t have much luck with his eyes, does he? This match is probably about as close to WCW Big Van Vader as WWF Big Fat Piece Of Sh*t Vader ever gets.

I’ve heard rumors that Stone Cold Steve Austin was originally supposed to win the Championship here, only for Bret to show up the next night and cost him the title against Sid. I’ve also heard that before he lost his smile, Shawn Michaels was supposed to beat Sid, interfere in this match to keep Bret Hart from winning (and giving it to The Undertaker), then have Hart interfere in the Sid match the next match and cost him the belt to set up Sid/Taker and Hart/Michaels for WrestleMania. No matter what the true story is, Austin nearly blows out his knee during the match and seemingly gets eliminated before he’s supposed to, but runs back out to interfere anyway and, whoops:

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Bret Hart Is WWF Champion

Bret takes advantage of the confusion caused by Austin to push Undertaker over the top rope and win his fourth of five WWF Championships. It’s a long reign, and absolutely not the moment where everything starts to go wrong for him.

And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for February 17, 1997.

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Best/Worst: Bret Hart Is Noble Dumb

Here’s a fun game. Pretend you’re Bret Hart. You wanted to be WWF Champion, but you didn’t think it was gonna happen. You won the Royal Rumble, but you didn’t actually “win” it because an unhinged Texan in a vest and underpants who might also be a serial killer cheated and threw you out. People were jerking you around to the point that you actually quit, and only came back because you got a title opportunity. You became one of four people in a #1 contender match, but then the Female Burt Reynolds-style champion you hate got his feelings hurt and gave up the championship, and suddenly the #1 contender match was for the belt. You won, but in doing so you further enraged the serial killer who is already obsessed with you, to the point that even after injuring him you had to fight him off during the finish.

Now say you’ve got the opening match on Raw, and it’s a title defense against Sycho Sid. Before it can get started, crazy vesty panties shows up again and attacks you. The match gets postponed until later in the show.

Now say you’re trying to have the match for a second time, and he shows up AGAIN and attacks you AGAIN. Nobody around you seems to be able to stop him, or even keep him like, quarantined to a room so he’ll stop showing up with weapons to try to kill you. The match has been ruined twice in one night, but you’ve still gotta defend the WWF Championship against a 7-foot tall sweat-slippery maniac.

What do you do? I’d say “buy a gun,” but even that doesn’t work.

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The match finally happens — WWF has cried wolf so many times about not baiting and switching (only to follow it with a bait and switch) that they HAVE to deliver — and yadda yadda, Bret gets Sid in the Sharpshooter, Earl Hebner gets in Sid’s face looking for a submission, and Stone Cold shows up with a steel chair to bash Bret in the top of the head with it and cost him the championship after only 24 hours. The crowd cheers all of this, and helps justify Bret’s very real response to them (and Austin) over the next few months.

Hart vs. Sid is actually really great and probably Sid’s best-ever one-on-one match, so if you’ve never seen it, take a quarter-hour of your day and watch it below.

by rasslemania

Point of interest: at the 11-minute mark, Sid goes up to the second rope to drop a leg on Bret. As Jim Ross is noting how huge he is, Sid almost slips and falls. Lawler is like, “uh oh, his leg almost gave out.” Sid drops a terrible leg, and after the match is probably like, “heh, that was a close one, guess I’m never coming off the ropes again!”

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Worst: All The Worst Things In One Segment

If you asked me to name the three things I like the least about this era of Raw, I’d say:

1. Marc Mero matches
2. The Nation of Domination as the world’s lamest nWo
3. Ahmed Johnson’s clothes

The first actual match of this episode (remembering that Hart vs. Sid misfired twice and ended up main-eventing) is Savio Vega vs. “Wildman” Marc Mero, combining all three in a terrible, terrible jambalaya. It ends suddenly when PG-13 sexually harasses Sable, sending her scurrying into the ring to hide behind Mero.

It looks like Mero and Sable are toast, but Ahmed Johnson finishes up his role of Michael Darling in a local theater production of Peter Pan just in time to hit the ring and attack the Nation with a board.

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Seriously, dude looks like he just got back from waiting up for Santa Claus in the 1800s. Thank goodness he’s got his long johns tucked into his boots, otherwise those pants would’ve billowed free and he would’ve looked like Spawn from the back.

Worst: Wait, I Forgot The Head Bangers

I think they’re worse than Ahmed’s clothes. At least Ahmed kinda makes sense showing up dressed like a shoot John Henry. The Head Bangers are still wearing flannel vests and spitting water in each other’s faces because they listen to heavy metal. They could’ve shown up like Ahmed looking like a sack of red potatoes and I would’ve liked them more.

There’s good news, though. You might recognize the jobbers they face:

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Best: Brother Nero, I Knew You’d Come

It’s the Raw debut of Matt and Jeff Hardy, aka The Hardy Boys(z), the only real-life brother tag team duo named after both a children’s book series and a turn of the century comic strip.

They’ve been teen jobbers for a while up until this point, but they’re still about a year away from being signed and actually winning matches, and roughly 19 from being avant-garde ironic backyard wrestling geniuses. It’s evident from second one that they’re a better team than the Head Bangers, with Jeff audibly popping JR with a flying clothesline in the opening moments.

Watch:

For further proof that the Head Bangers are God awful, here’s Trasher not being able to decide if he should body slam Matt Hardy or give him the world’s worst stun-gun and just doing them both at the same time. Apparently Matt Hardy was “broken” in 1997:

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And here’s Jeff Hardy channeling his hero Super Calo by selling a clothesline with a shooting star press onto his neck:

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If the Hardys keep wrestling like this, there’s no way they’ll last!

Best: Late 90s Commentary

+1 to Jim Ross for sounding like me writing a parody of wrestling announcers with the line, “What’s that lady’s name? Marilyn Manson?” Note: This time next year she’ll be doing your intro!

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Worst: Rocky Maivia Vs. Leif Cassidy, Or
Best: Important Things Are Happening!

Dwayne “The Maivia” Johnson takes on a guy who joins Andrew McCarthy as one of the only two grown men in human history to have their lives improved by a mannequin head, Leif Cassidy. The match is a slow 10 minutes, with Rocky knowing he’s supposed to do babyface stuff but not really knowing when to do it or why, and the crowd wanting to be polite about it. That doesn’t last forever.

Two important things happen during the match, though:

1. Sunny may be running for public office or setting herself up to sit on a Bill Clinton impersonator’s lap, one or the other.

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Come on, she can’t be president, she won’t even announce her Candidocy.

2. Jerry Lawler is bothered by these ECW signs.

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There’s a guy in the crowd behind the announce table holding an ECW RULES sign, so King snatches it away from him and goes on an impromptu (cough) rant about how he’s sick and tired of people bringing ECW signs to shows. He says nobody’s heard of them or knows what they are, so he points to a sign that says “ECW,” clarifies that it stands for “Extreme Championship Wrestling” and invites them to Raw at the Manhattan Center next week. That’ll make sure everyone keeps not knowing who they are!

My favorite part of this is that they use it to take a shot at Nitro, saying one of King’s friends brought a “Jerry Lawler” sign to Nitro and had it taken away, but these ECW signs keep popping up because WWF “believes in freedom of speech.” Which is, uh, why King wants people to stop bringing ECW signs! Or something!

That leads to a very, very important moment:

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During a pretty good but INCREDIBLY meaningless Owen Hart vs. Flash Funk match, Jerry Lawler gets a phone call from an “ECW Representative.” When they say hello, it turns out that it’s ECW President Paul E. Dangerously, better known to modern fans and/or anyone who didn’t grow up feeling weird about Missy Hyatt as Paul Heyman.

Heyman says that “unlike Vince McMahon” he’s an owner who doesn’t hide behind representatives — another brick being removed from the wall between the fantasy of WWF Announcer Vince McMahon and the fantastic reality of WWF Owner Mr. McMahon — and that he’s personally called to accept King’s challenge. He’s bringing ECW talent to Raw next week, and spoiler alert, it’s one of my favorite Raws ever. It’s the Raw that brings ECW and UFC into official WWE continuity.

Isn’t it amazing how this show went from nothing to pretty great after somebody said, “hey, let’s actually DO STUFF?” That’s all you have to do. I wish they’d do that for Raw now.

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Best: Chyna Shakes It Like A Polaroid Picture

Goldust and Marlena show up to discuss the issues with Hunter Hearst Helmsley and random fan attacks, saying “all the money in the world” couldn’t buy Marlena — have you tried a computer? — and that Goldust is, you guessed it, more man than Helmsley will EVER be. WWF women in the 90s are like that. They meet you and they’re like, “hi, I’m Denise, I’m 24 years old and this guy standing near me is MORE MAN THAN YOU’LL EVER BE.”

Hunter shows up to dispute that biased comparison of manhoods and jumps Goldie, beating him up and laying him out with a Pedigree. Marlena tries to step to him, but she’s snagged from behind by That Amazon Woman, who absolutely shakes the sh*t out of her. You might not remember the names of everyone in your family, but you remember how hard Chyna shook Marlena.

Later in the night, during a Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Bart Gunn match I am 1000% not screencapping, Goldust runs out and gets revenge by chasing him off. I’m disappointed to say that Chyna doesn’t show up again and shake Goldust the exact same way. That would’ve ruled.

And that’s the show for this week. To recap, we had two title changes in 24 hours, Stone Cold dangerously flailing at anything that moves en route to the match that makes his career, the Raw debut of Chyna, the Raw debut of the Hardy Boyz, the Raw debut of Paul Heyman’s voice and the setup of NEXT week’s Raw, which features the debuts of the Dudley Boyz, Tazz, Ken Shamrock and more. Oh, and SABU shows up.

It’s crazy how important Raw suddenly is. Thank you for putting up with like a year of Smoking Gunns matches to get here!

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: WWF followed up one of the most important Raws ever, Thursday Raw Thursday, with the debut of Chyna, the Raw debut of the Hardy Boyz and Paul Heyman calling in on the phone to accept a challenge to bring ECW talent to Raw. Also, the Head Bangers have to be a thing now.

If you haven’t seen this also-kinda-monumental episode of Raw, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you think about the show.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Hardcore TV … sorry, Monday Night Raw, for February 24, 1997.

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Best: ECW Is In The House

Before we begin, there are two important things you need to know about this episode of Raw:

1. Half the WWF roster is over in Germany establishing the new European Championship (in one of the best matches ever aired on WWE television), so the company needed to pad this already New York-based episode with talent from an upstart promotion they were absolutely not involved with whatsoever, Philadelphia’s Extreme Championship Wrestling. You may know it the passionate, murderously politically incorrect Paul Heyman joint that changed wrestling forever and stocked the most popular era of WCW and WWF television with a huge chunk of its most popular and/or beloved stars. Even modern day WWE TV is full of ECW alumni, from Chris Jericho on Raw to Rhyno on Smackdown.

2. The show is held in front of what Vince McMahon won’t stop calling a “partisan crowd,” and can be divided clearly into two halves; the half where ECW is clearly pulling its punches but wants to get as much of its roster on primetime TV as possible, and the half where the WWF guys who didn’t get to go to Europe sh*t the bed in slow motion. I’ll divide the show in half as well, just to show you what I’m talking about.

It’s hard to watch this episode and not prefer the ECW product. It’s honestly the most direct illustration of what the WWF was doing wrong, and I think even they saw it and worked to fix it. Two weeks from now, Raw is war.

Best: Ladies And Gentlemen, His Name Is Paul Heyman

After the first commercial break, a “ring attendant” who is clearly REALLY not into the idea of getting kicked in the face gets kicked in the face by legendary ECW tag team The Eliminators, Perry Saturn and John Kronus. You may know Saturn as a member of Raven’s Flock in WCW, the fourth most important Radical or that guy whose gimmick was that he’d been hit in the head too many times, had brain damage and talked to a mop. You may know Kronus as that guy who tagged with Perry Saturn in ECW.

They show up out of nowhere and hit Total Elimination, their combo spinning heel kick/leg sweep, which loses about 40% of its power without Joey Styles screaming “TOTALLIMINASHAAANNNNNN” into a microphone that barely works at the top of his lungs.

Paul “E. Dangerously” Heyman makes his Raw debut, announcing that “ECW is in the house” while ten dudes in Blue World Order shirts ROAR. Jerry Lawler, the man who invited ECW to the show in the first place, spends the entire show burying them, including a bunch of people he’d be praising a few years later when they became WWE stars. Saturn and Heyman are the first two (2). We’ll keep a running count.

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By the way, this all culminates in Heyman and Lawler getting into a catfight at the announce table, which loses about 40% of its power without Joey Styles screaming “CATFIGHT!” into a microphone that barely works at the top of his lungs. It’s the most Larry Zbyszko-ass move Jerry Lawler ever pulled. You invited ECW to the show, arranged it with Vince McMahon that they’d get several matches on the show with just ECW guys vs. ECW guys, then tell them they don’t deserve to be on TV after they’ve been on your TV for two hours.

Anyway!

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Best/Worst: Say Hello To The Blue Guy

I guess they wanted to make those dudes in the shirts happy right away.

The world’s most watched introduction to Extreme Championship Wrestling ends up being a comical Italian stereotype vs. a parody of a WCW faction, featuring a guy in a half shirt and daisy dukes doing famous wrestling poses with an overweight albino raccoon man. Like, we couldn’t have started with Sabu?

Anyway, Big Stevie Cool of the Blue World Order takes on Little Guido. All of these guys ended up in the WWF at some point, with Little Guido becoming Nunzio, Big Stevie Cool of course being like five incarnations of Stevie Richards — he’ll show you, you’ll see! — Blue Meanie being a figurative and literal punching bag for JBL, and Hollywood Nova morphing into Simon Dean. So that’s six future WWE employees by the time we get to the first match. Raven makes an appearance standing in the aisle doing nothing to bring us to seven.

The best moment of the match (and maybe the show) is Heyman on commentary. Lawler tries to sh*t on the bWo by saying they’re nothing but a rip-off, and Heyman gloriously puts him on the spot with, “Who are they ripping off?” Vince McMahon responds with some level zero improv by saying they’re not to be confused with the New World Order “clothing line.” YES AND nobody thought this through, and Paul Heyman is quicker and smarter than both of you.

Worst: 7-11

Making a cameo appearance with the Blue World Order is “7-11,” a Syxx parody played by future Ring of Honor founder Rob Feinstein. 7-11? LOL, I’ll pretend you said 18.

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Best: A Real Rocket Buster

The second ECW match of the night features future Smackdown color commentator and Guy Who Briefly Seemed Tough Until Jim Ross Made Him Cry By Hitting Him In The Face With Candy, Taz. Sorry, “Tazz.” He gets a quick squash win over Mikey Whipwreck, proprietor of the Stone Cold Stunner. Thanks, Mikey. How much would we remember Stone Cold Steve Austin reversing a Sweet Chin Music into the Million Dollar Dream at WrestleMania 14?

That weird falling blur you see on the right of the picture is SABU! IT’S SABU! That’s how you have to type it when you see him for the first time. It’s a “star light, star bright, first star I see tonight” pro wres scenario. Sabu interrupts the middle of the match to leap off onto Tazz’s ring attendants for some reason, never actually coming close to the ring or affecting the match. He was just like, HEY, I’M UP HERE, GET ME DOWN. He also inadvertently reveals that the R in the RAW set doesn’t have a lot of stability, and it almost comes out from under him.

The reverse angle shown after the break looks a lot better:

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Still, sucks to be the guys in the front of the huddle who realized Sabu somehow got Erik Watts air on a falling attack and had a crazy dude torpedo them head-first. Solid chance at least one of those guys is Alex Wright.

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Worst: Undertaker Likes To Watch

The final ECW match of the card is Tommy Dreamer vs. D-Von Dudley, which takes the totally reasonable “everybody into the pool” booking to … well, the extreme. Oh, and we miss the final minute of the match because we needed a closeup of The Undertaker trying to remember which order “demons” and “hail” are supposed to come out of his mouth in.

But yeah, this is easily the most “ECW” match of the night. Dreamer and D-Von almost immediately fight to the outside, where Dreamer starts grabbing weapons from the audience and just kinda New Jacking D-Von in the face with them. Man, how great would it have been if NEW JACK had shown up on Raw? The Real Double J would’ve ended up his fifth justifiable homicide. They fight with the stairs, and Lawler is just non-stop IT’S CRAP, IT’S CRAPPY, THIS SUCKS, EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SUCKS, I HATE IT, EVERYONE DOING EVERYTHING IS EMBARRASSING AND TERRIBLE. And one part of you’s like, “I don’t agree with that heel announcer, ECW is great,” and the other half is like, “yo, I wonder if Rey Mysterio’s on Nitro right now, they aren’t gonna repeatedly tell me he blows.”

D-Von brings Dreamer’s manager/girlfriend/lesbian threesome tentpole/childhood friend Beulah McGillicutty into the ring — ECW stories were weird — and tries to use her as a human shield. Dreamer is like YOU CAN’T TREAT THE WOMAN I’M ASSUMING IS CURTIS AXEL’S KAYFABE MOTHER THAT WAY, but Beulah (as Beulah does) stands up for herself, kicks D-Von in the balls and frees him up to take a DDT onto a chair and the loss. Again, we miss all of this to look up the Undertaker’s nose.

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After the match, Bubba Ray Dudley hits the ring and we get the first-ever WWE edition of the 3-D. When it looks like all is lost, the wonderful garbage-ass SANDMAN appears from the crowd, pours beer all over himself, smacks himself in the head with a stick until he bleeds and awkwardly clears the ring by flipping his sh*tty dad body at people until his Zubaz knocks them unconscious and/or sends them fleeing. Two of ECW’s most memorable icons just brawled with the future most decorated tag team in wrestling history, moments after one of the most popular and bulletproof tandem finishers ever, and Lawler’s like, “nobody would like this, GFY.” I remember watching this and being like, “yeah, this is way better, I wish this was the whole show.”

Unfortunately, it is not.

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Worst: Into The WWF Abyss

The opening match of the show is the most New Generation WWF garbage you can imagine. Seriously, read this and try not to throw up in your mouth a little.

The Godwinns (hurk) take on the New Blackjacks (HURK). The Blackjacks debuted on Shotgun Saturday Night just two days earlier in a match against the Head Bangers (hurrrrk) that began when the Blackjacks interrupted a scheduled Godwinns/Head Bangers classic a minute in, replaced them as the Bangers’ opponents, then lost when the Godwinns interfered on THEM about two minutes into THAT. Jesus take the wheel.

Here, we are seriously protecting the f*cking Godwinns by having them only lose to the new team of reportedly super tough and effective cowboy guys after Phineas gets pinned with his foot on the rope. A second referee even runs out to point it out and make it obvious to everyone — please don’t stop loving THE GODWINNS, every man woman and child in the country — but the original referee says his decision stands. So the poor sport babyface Godwinns dump slop on his head (pictured), and we watch him slip and slide around in it for a few minutes while hillbilly chase music plays. Note: THIS IS THE BEST WWF MATCH OF THE NIGHT.

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Best: Hey, The Legion Of Doom Is Back!

Were you wondering why the Road Warriors hadn’t been on Nitro in a while? Me either, but at the beginning of 1997 they were like, “hey, let’s go back to that other promotion where we were never really taken seriously, I bet they’ve got lots of creative ideas for us based around airbrushed motorcycle helmets and suicidal alcoholism.”

But the Road Warriors are legitimately one of the most legendary tag teams of all time, so even the Partisan Crowd pops hard for them. LOL, enjoy that while it lasts, because-

Worst: They’re Wrestling The Head Bangers

Head Bangers aaand, Head Bangers aaaand …

Worst: WE HAVE TO PROTECT THE HEAD BANGERS AGAINST THE ROAD WARRIORS IN THEIR RETURN MATCH

Not a joke. WWF could not book THE LEGION OF DOOM in a clean victory over Mosh and goddamn Thrasher in the LOD’s surprise return to the company. Instead, they have them wrestle a competitive match (??) for about seven minutes until they boringly brawl to the outside and everyone gets counted out. Yep, they brought back the Road Warriors to have them not be able to beat a be-skirted Beaver Cleavage.

Absolutely unreal. There are four WWF-branded matches on the show where they’re supposed to be proving they’re better than ECW, and zero of them end clean. All the important guys are in Germany, and they didn’t have the stones to put one hopeless undercarder over another.

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Worst: The Curse Of Crush

There are two (2) Nation of Domination matches on the show, and both of them end in a disqualification.

The first is Goldust vs. Savio Vega Dark, which goes on for almost ten minutes before the worst wrestler in history, Jailbird Crush, runs out and attacks Goldust, getting Vega disqualified for no reason. They continue to put the very slow, uninteresting Payless boots to him until a “fan” runs in and makes the save.

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No, that’s not Tommy Dreamer’s non-union Mexican equivalent, it’s Miguel Perez. You may remember him from that unexpectedly great match he had with Juventud Guerrera on a random episode of Nitro, or as the guy who looks like the Soup Nazi had a baby with Prince Albert. Not sure why he’s dressed like Kerwin White cosplaying his own caddy, but here he is.

As you might’ve imagined, the alignment between Perez and Goldust doesn’t last long, because if two non-white people interact on WWE TV and share a heritage, they end up in a tag team together. By June, both Perez and Vega are Boriquas. I bet you’ve got lots of fond memories of Los Boriquas, right?

That’s not the only thing Crush ruins on the night. The main event is supposed to be Faarooq and The Undertaker going one-on-one, but Savio and Crush jog out to cause a DQ. The Legion of Doom returns to run them off, because I guess Ahmed Johnson and his board and his old-timey pajamas are in Germany.

So, to recap, ECW had:

1. Three matches where outside interference occurred, but the matches continued and had decisive victors

WWF had:

1. a tag team match ending in a double count-out
2. a tag team match ending with a referee dispute and a hog slopping
3. two (2) Nation of Domination DQ run-ins

Oh, sh*t, wait, they also had a SEXY ARM-WRESTLING CONTEST.

Worst: Over The Tops

WWF was missing half their male roster and wanted to run a women’s match on the card, then realized, “sh*t, wait, we don’t have any actual female wrestlers.” So instead, they organize an arm-wrestling contest between Sunny and Marlena, two characters who have barely ever interacted, officiated by the Honky Tonk Man. Woof.

Marlena shows up with bruised ribs after last week’s attack from Chyna, which she accentuates by dressing like a Solid Gold dancer. Sunny, God bless her, wears this:

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I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an arm wrestling contest on a pro wrestling show, but here’s how it works. You’ve got a heel and a face. And, uh, an Elvis impersonator. The heel stalls and stalls and stalls, and when they’re finally forced to wrestle arms, they cheat just before they lose. Sunny manages to throw salt in Marlena’s eyes at the last second, despite wearing a bra and hot pants and honestly having nowhere reasonable on her person to store salt.

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If you’re trying to figure out what the point of this is, imagine that you’ve got a VCR and you’re going through puberty in 1997. And you get off on the thought of one of the Del Rubio Triplets going to aerobics class and being blinded by a cloud of baby powder tossed in her face by a strung-out go-go dancer.

What else happened on this show? Let’s just burn right through it:

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Green Lantern Fan is here! I don’t see the lady he proposed to on Raw four years ago with him, but I’m guessing he could tell you exactly how long it took Stevie Richards to pin Little Guido.

What else …

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Tiny Tim died, so they showed that clip of Jerry Lawler making fun of him on Raw in 1993 without actually explaining why anyone would like Tiny Tim. Imagine if Ken Bone had a ukulele, that’s pretty much it.

Note: How great’s it going to be when you’re reading this in November and nobody has any idea what a “Ken Bone” is?

Oh, here’s something good: Raw is in Germany next week, so Vince McMahon hypes it up by saying it’s, well:

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Hey German citizens, happy to finally live in a united nation after 30 years? We’ll do you one better: THE SULTAN VS. FLASH FUNK.

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Finally, The World’s Most Dangerous Man Ken Shamrock makes his WWF Raw debut as a celebrity in the crowd. Jerry Lawler approaches him, gets the crowd to politely woo for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and asks Ken to regale the crowd with stories of them training together. Ken refuses the Yes And, straight-up calling him a liar. Later, Todd Pettingill somehow makes the situation even more awkward by asking Ken who he thinks will win the upcoming championship match between Sid and the Undertaker. Ken tries to avoid the question a few times, but when pressed chooses the Undertaker, because he’s “got a little more balance.” Slap me.

And that’s Domestic Raw! One of the worst performances from the Raw roster on record, and a grand total of 13 — 14 if you count Beulah — future WWE stars getting called worthless sh*tbirds for an hour. One of the craziest episodes ever at the time, and a huge reason why ECW sincerely turned into a “thing.” They’ll be back in a couple of weeks to keep it going.

Oh, whoops, one more important thing from this episode:

Best: TELL ME A LIE

Praise the Lord, it turns out the ECW invasion episode of Raw is also the debut of ‘Tell Me A Lie,’ the infamously melodramatic original ballad weeping for the imaginary injuries and hurt feelings of former WWF Champion Shawn Michaels. If you’ve never seen this, watch it with a giant smile on your face remembering that he’s back a couple of months from now, only “lost his smile” to get out of having to lose to Bret Hart at a WrestleMania, and told this lady a lie. Never say Shawn Michaels didn’t do what his fans asked!

♫ Maybe we could stay together
Maybe it could last forever
Maybe if you’d just tell me a lie
Maybe then we’ll never say goodbye ♫

Best Raw ever.

Anyway, stay tuned for an all new Best and Worst of La Femme Nikita.

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Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: With half the roster in Germany, Raw became a showcase for Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler’s one-sided and oddly helpful feud with Extreme Championship Wrestling. Half the show was ECW matches to help promote their upcoming pay-per-view ‘Barely Legal,’ and the other half was really sad, lazy WWF matches with sh*t finishes because the people who didn’t get to go to Germany didn’t want to work.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you think about the show.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw — the last time we get to call it that — for March 3, 1997.

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Best: Willkommen Nach Montag Abend Roh

Fun fact: in German, “Raw” is “ROH.” If that’s the case, NXT must translate to “TNA.”

Welcome to the final episode of Monday Night Raw, coming to you live on a considerable amount of tape from Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, Germany. WWF had a huge presence in Germany in the 1990s, as their roster featured such top German stars as … uh …

They didn’t pick you, you’re in WCW. I guess that’s why they didn’t get a wictory in the ratings.

But don’t worry, things get better a few years from now, when-

[shuffles papers]

Things are a little better now, with Sanity’s Alexander Wolfe and that enormous Batista-ass German goalkeeper under contract in NXT, but between them and the 7 months Karl Gotch spent there in the early ’70s, German representation in WWE has been surprisingly sparse. It’s even worse when you realize all those dudes playing wrestling Nazis in the 60s were from Canada. Or Texas.

Anyway, we’re here to declare a CHAMPION OF EUROPE, and I bet you can’t guess who ends up champion on a roster featuring exactly one (1) legitimately European guy!

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Best: Bret Hart Is Definitely Not Going To Regret This

The first match of the show is Bret Hart vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley, which would be a dream match if you fast forwarded H a few years. It’d be even better if you rewound Bret to like, 1994 and did 1994 valiant babyface Bret against 2000 King Sh*t Triple H.

At this point, though, H is still the least notable of the Kliq and just starting to get heat via being saved by his monstrous bodybuilder girlfriend. The major story is Bret Hart’s increasing frustrating with EVERYTHING, which leads to him getting disqualified when he shoves down the referee. Referee Earl Hebner. Earl is like, “no, it’s fine, everything’s fine” and then bides his f*cking time.

On the other side of Bret’s story …

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Stone Cold Steve Austin is live via taped satellite to cut a wonderful, pitch-perfect promo about how stupid ‘Tell Me A Lie’ was, and how Vince McMahon needs to stop making melodramatic music videos about Shawn Michaels every time he gets the flu. Austin’s like, “I blew out my knee at Final Four and wrestled 25 more minutes against the three top guys in the company.” It’s very, very easy to see why Austin went from The Ringmaster to the biggest star in the company in just a couple of years, and watching these again he still kinda feels like a revelation.

It’s great character work, too, because of how directly Hart and Austin’s characters work against one another. Bret Hart is frustrated and starting to lose his mind, but he operates under a personal code of honor and ethics or whatever that keeps him from going too far over the edge. The worst he’s gonna do is throw a tantrum and quit, or break a bunch of stuff at ringside. Meanwhile you’ve got Stone Cold Steve Austin, who is ALSO frustrated and starting to lose his mind, but he’s not a comfortable “top star” like Hart … he feels undervalued and underappreciated, and it’s not hypocritical. He doesn’t have 4 WWF Championship runs and is still like, “woe is me.” He’s hungry as f*ck, so his frustration becomes dangerously constructive, and he’s willing to go farther and last longer and hit harder than anyone else on the roster. Dude could get his neck broken in a match and his tornado of an internal spirit would still find a way to win. Not that that’s going to happen soon or anything.

While this is happening, Hunter Hearst Helmsley is like, “just gonna lay low and lift weights with my girlfriend and wait for everyone to kill each other.”

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Best: Rock, Meet Sock

You know, Rocky Maivia gets a lot of sh*t (even from The Rock himself) for being terrible, but that wasn’t it at all. He’s still the same wrestler, he’s just playing a character created by a focus group. A bunch of people were like, “here’s what will work,” and then it didn’t, and he was stuck doing it. But as a performer, he was still great, and almost every week here I’m like, “Rocky had a surprisingly great match with ____.” Dude had it. Maybe I’m just biased because I’m going back and watching him exist side-by-side with his Asian Annie Prince Iaukea, who wrestles like somebody put a Hawaiian shirt on a manatee.

Here, Rocky had a surprisingly great match with Vader, who is in his WWF slum period but riding high on his gutsy, eyebally performance at Final Four. He’s bumping way too much for way too little to make Rock look like a superstar, doing big 180-degree sells for clotheslines and getting thrown on belly to belly suplexes. I see you working hard, Vader. I’m sorry they never liked you.

Like most good WWF matches from this era, it builds and builds to an unrelated finish that cancels out everything before it. Mankind runs out for no reason and plasters Rock in the face with Paul Bearer’s urn, causing a DQ. Vader just kinda stands there with his hands out like, “what the f*ck, man?” It’s a terrible ending to a match that was going way better than it needed to, and, notably, the first on-screen interaction between the future Rock n’ Sock Connection. I hope The Rock was so mean to him because he never forgave him for hitting him with a supernatural dead guy in a jar.

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Worst: The Funky Sultan

The Sultan vs. Flash Funk uses the same template as Vader vs. Rocky Maivia, but dials down the talent by about a billion and cuts the length in half. So you’ve got The Sultan not really working hard at all, and everyone lying around like they’re 20 minutes into a match at the 2-minute mark. Right before he locks on the camel clutch to end the match, Sultan basically does the entirety of the Usos entrance haka to kill time. He’s just throwing his arms around and smacking his thighs and you’re like Christ dude, f*ck his ass and make him humble already.

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Yeah, no kidding.

Worst: Translating For Ahmed Johnson

The funniest moment of the night goes to this Ahmed Johnson promo, which actually manages to be less comprehensible than its own German translation. I don’t speak German, but I also don’t speak Ahmed, so I’m hoping the translator guy’s promo was just, “AHMED JOHNSON, LADIES AND JENNAMEN, OH MY!”

The point here is that Faarooq has challenged Ahmed to a street fight at WrestleMania, and Ahmed promises that he’ll come, but he won’t come alone. I don’t think that’s what he was asking, Ahmed. The announce team referring to him as “this big Johnson” doesn’t help.

To put it another way,

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Ahmed Johnson, ladies and jennamen. Oh my.

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Best: Mankind Tries To Make Up For Ruining That Rocky/Vader Match

A couple of weeks ago, miracle worker Bret Hart got probably the best match you’ll ever see out of Sid. This week Mankind is on Sid duty, as the World Wrestling Federation shows an unusual amount of self-awareness by only putting their giant wet penis champion in the ring with guys who could pull a great match out of thin air. Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Mankind … all capable of making Sid, a flank steak in a Gary Spivey wig, look like the best wrestler in the world.

This is pretty by-the-numbers, but Mankind is working his ass off. Look at the height on that powerbomb. The finish is A+ house show material, with Mankind accidentally hitting Paul Bearer — oh no! — and taking multiple finishers. Storyline wise, it makes sense to have Sid handily dispatch the Undertaker’s most dreaded rival and his old manager before facing Taker himself. In practice, it’s a solid but not exceptional match that kinda sorta looks like Sid wrestling one of his own poops.

by rasslemania

Best: A Classic

The point of this show (and the reason you should seek it out and watch it, or at least spend 20 minutes on that Daily Motion video) is the main event, the British Bulldog vs. Owen Hart to crown the first-ever WWF European Champion.

The story up until now is that Owen and the Bulldog are the tag team champions, but they’re not getting along. Owen keeps accidentally costing them matches by hitting Bulldog and/or his opponents with his Slammy Award, or faking injuries on the outside at terrible times to get them counted out. Bulldog isn’t the most noble guy, but he’s tired of losing matches he didn’t have to lose. On Shotgun Saturday Night they fire their manager, Clarence Mason, for a “conflict of interest.” It seems like it’s the start of a breakup for the team, but Shawn Michaels’ loss of a smile shook everything up, and it ended up clearing out room for the reformation of the Hart Foundation. But that’s still a few weeks away.

Here, Owen and the Bulldog are put into direct competition for a new championship. Bulldog always goes Super Saiyan when performing in front of big European crowds, so he brings his A-game. Owen Hart is Owen Hart. What results is 17 minutes of maybe the best straight-up singles match aired on WWE TV in the 1990s, and easily one of the maybe 10 best matches ever on Raw. It’s clean, competitive, they keep up the pace throughout so it’s never boring, and the finish is a callback to the respective most famous finish for each guy. Owen tries to roll through with a victory roll like he did to beat his brother Bret at WrestleMania X, and Bulldog counters like he did to beat Bret at SummerSlam ’92. Not only is that perfect, but it subconsciously links them both back to Bret, which becomes important later.

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The European Championship would have its moments — D’Lo Brown, Eurocontinental Champion Kurt Angle, anything William Regal did ever — but its legacy is mostly embarrassing. Mideon became champion after finding the deactivated belt in Shane McMahon’s luggage. Owen Hart became champion after pinning Goldust, who was dressed as the champion, so it counted? And don’t forget when the championship changed hands in the second fall of a 2-out-of-3 falls match.

Still, you couldn’t hope to start a belt’s lineage with a better match. An absolute must-see.

Next week, Raw declares war. Declares itself war. Something like that.

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2016 has claimed another legendary WWF manager. Earlier this year we lost Mr. Fuji, and now PWInsider has reported that Frenchy Martin passed away on Friday morning at 69 years old.

“I led an extraordinary life,” Martin told The Montreal Journal last month. “I am proud to have succeeded in the world of wrestling. I am no more worthy than another, but I’m not afraid of death. I accept the result. “

Like most classic managers, Martin (real name Jean Gagné) was a wrestler before his managerial career, winning multiple championships in Canada’s Stampede Wrestling and Puerto Rico’s World Wrestling Council. In WWF, Frenchy is most notable for his stint managing Canada’s strongest man Dino Bravo, which inspired beautiful fan signs like this one:

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Martin would bring his own signs to the ring featuring slogans like, “USA is not OK.” Unsurprisingly, he and Bravo did a lot of feuding with Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Martin also wrestled for the WWF, did commentary, hosted international interview segments and was the host of “Le Studio,” the French-Canadian Piper’s Pit.

Former WWF star Rick Martel weighed in on the loss in comments made to Slam Sports.

“We’re like brothers,” Martel said in a chat with SLAM! Wrestling. “When I was a little kid, around Frenchy. Frenchy and my brother were together all the time. So I knew him. He’s like a big brother to me.”

Our heartfelt condolences go out to Gagné’s friends and family. Let’s try to get through the rest of 2016 without losing any more great 80s managers, okay?

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Antiquated ’90s wrestling show Monday Night Raw became RAW IS WAR, with all the iconography you know from the modern show. The TitanTron is there now, the lights are darker, everybody gets pyro and we’re like 10 shows from somebody whipping their dick out in front of a cardboard sign featuring a South Park drawing of them and the phrase Somebody Fears Somebody.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you think about the show. This is where the Monday Night Wars really kick in, so if you aren’t reading now, what’s wrong with you?

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for March 17, 1997.

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Worst: Another Goddamn Nation Of Domination Disqualification

Did the Nation of Domination ever actually win or lose a match? Seems like every week there are 1-3 matches on Raw that boil down to, “a guy from the Nation was wrestling, he was about to lose, everybody else from the Nation ran down and got him disqualified, the Nation did a Dollar Store nWo beatdown until Ahmed Johnson showed up in his pajamas to hit them with a plank of wood.”

Anyway, guys from the Nation were wrestling and were about to lose, everybody else from the Nation ran down and got them disqualified, the Nation did a Dollar Store nWo beatdown until Ahmed Johnson showed up looking like the ghost of Harlem Heat to hit them with a plank of wood.

No, seriously, ghost of Harlem Heat. Tell me I’m wrong:

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This is all to continue the build to the Legion of Doom and Ahmed vs. the Nation of Domination in a Chicago Street Fight (which I’m sad Lex Luger isn’t a part of) at WrestleMania 13. Every week the build is the same, down to the “YUH, GOWAH, DUHHH” post-match promo from kneepad-ass Ahmed Johnson. You’d think Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin would be the Mania 13 story WWE’d constantly be trying to recreate, but nope, when modern WWE’s building to Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin by having Dolph Ziggler wrestle Baron Corbin for six straight weeks, they’re looking back at Mania fondly and sighing, “if only we could get back that Nation of Domination magic.”

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Best: That Amazon Woman Gets A Name

Like every Hunter Hearst Helmsley match until he starts feuding with Owen Hart, this one goes nowhere and is extremely skippable. He wrestles Flash Funk for a few minutes until Flash gets distracted by THAT AMAZON WOMAN and eats a Pedigree, and a post-match beatdown ensues. Two in the first 15 minutes!

The important highlight here, though, is that That Woman gets a name: Chyna. Welcome to the Encyclopedia, Chyna. Things are about to get really good for you, then GREAT for you, then really, really bad.

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Ironic Best: Many Minis

The Monday Night Wars are officially underway, and here’s what you need to know. Each top company (WCW and the WWF) is run by an increasingly rich, increasingly out-of-touch guy whose only real booking plan is, “watch what the other guy’s doing, then do the same thing and pretend we did it first.” Both sides are doing it. The only problem is that they rarely lift the shit that actually works, and you end up with, like, Disco Inferno suddenly beating people with the Stone Cold Stunner. The most obvious recent bad booking heist happened when Rocky Maivia surprisingly won the Intercontinental Championship from Hunter Hearst Helmsley on Thursday Raw Thursday. Instead of yanking what was good about that — “sometimes unexpected title changes on TV can be fun” — WCW yanked literally everything else by having their Pacific Islander new guy beat their stuffed-shirt blue blood for their secondary championship on Nitro.

Back in December, WCW had a midget wrestling tag team match featuring future Lucha Underground star Mascarita Sagrada. I don’t want to use “midget” in the pejorative, that’s just the accepted pro graps nomenclature. The match was fine, but nothing came of it. That said, tell me you can imagine Vince McMahon watching an episode of Nitro with a midget tag on it and liking ANYTHING ELSE about the show. Vince was probably like, “holy shit, sign ALL of those guys. DO IT EVERY WEEK, THIS IS MY TRUE VISION OF SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT.”

So now, three months after WCW tried it once, WWF suddenly has a minis division. Unlike WCW, who brought in actual mini stars from Mexico as themselves, WWF is giving us Mascarita Sagrada — technically Mascarita Sagrada Jr., aka Tzuki, who eventually becomes Max Mini — teaming with “Mini Goldust” against “Mini Vader” and “Mini Makind.”

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I’m honestly surprised they didn’t bring in Sagrada as “Mini Shawn Michaels” and have Jerry Lawler cackle about him losing a little smile. Anyway, as you might expect, the match is fine and nothing comes of it, and WWF … has a minis division for two more years? Sure.

Hey, at least we can get through this episode without having to deal with ACTUAL Shawn Michaels, right? He retired five Raws ago and also has a career-threatening knee injury that’ll keep him out of-

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Wait, what?

Worst: The Boyhood Dream Continues

So yeah, five damn weeks ago Shawn Michaels forfeited the WWF Championship and stepped away from the World Wrestling Federation, citing a knee injury and a “lost smile” that kept him from enjoying his job. Three weeks ago, WWF produced a melodramatic music video about it, asking Shawn to “tell the a lie” and “say that he won’t go.” Hey, guess what?

Now that Bret Hart has officially been booked in a match with Stone Cold Steve Austin at WrestleMania and there’s no chance Shawn will have to wrestle or job to him, Shawn Michaels is BACK, smiling his ass off, bouncing around on one leg and chuckling about how he wants to be at WrestleMania while Vince creams his jeans.

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Shawn is like, “heh, how come I wasn’t invited to WrestleMania?” Vince is like, “you were injured.” Shawn blows it off, and announces he’s going to be at WrestleMania to sit in on the WWF Championship match, which definitely won’t be able to feature Bret Hart. Then he’s like, “heh, how come I wasn’t invited to the Slammy Awards?” HOLY SHIT SHAWN, BECAUSE YOU GOT CRY-FACED ON RAW AND GAVE UP THE CHAMPIONSHIP WITHOUT LOSING IT BECAUSE CANADA MADE YOU FEEL BAD. THAT IS YOUR ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.

This is bullshit. I hope somebody else says it before this episode’s over.

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Worst: The Rock Is Headed To His First WrestleMania

The barn-burner feud between “King Iaukea” Rocky Maivia and Steampunk Iron Sheik The Sultan continues, with Rocky sitting in on drab color commentary for The Sultan vs. Mike Bell. You may remember Bell from such films as Bigger, Stronger, Faster* or Prescription Thugs, both about how he did too many drugs, or from that time Perry Saturn tried to for real murder him in the ring.

Bell gets his Mike rung by The Sultan and a fight almost breaks out at ringside, stopped by the cool head and trusty hands of Tony Atlas. The Sultan will challenge Rocky Maivia for the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 13, and The Rock will spend the remainder of his life doing interviews where he’s like, “oh man, WrestleMania 13 sucked, huh,” and explaining why his character shit the bed so hard it got people to literally start chanting for his death.

Worst: Death And Taxes

If you’ve ever seen the Undertaker do something corny and thought to yourself, “this sucks, he used to be so cool,” here’s a clip of him bringing a construction paper tombstone to New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman to celebrate the death of a tax bill.

She calls it “sports wrestling,” which is wonderful, and is like, “I don’t like wrestling myself, but my weiner kid liked it. He doesn’t like it anymore, but I bought all the figurines, which is how grandmas say action figures, so I’m not going to make you go all the way to Madison Square Garden to see it.” Big ass Undertaker is just standing there in his goth dracula samurai robes with prison teardrops on his face, posing for mark photos with little kids while Linda McMahon exchanges secret handshakes with the other lizard people.

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Best/Worst: British Bulldog Urns A Victory

WWF’s been teasing us with the breakup of the British Bulldog and Owen Hart for weeks now, and that continues here. Bulldog takes on Regular-Sized Vader, which (of course) ends with Mankind getting on the apron and getting Vader disqualified. It’s a boring match, but it’s got some impressive power in it, and Bulldog is Lex-Lugerian in his nuclear babyfacedom. Owen tries to bail him out for a 2-on-1 attack and gets overwhelmed, so Bulldog smartly just punches out Paul Bearer, steals Bearer’s magical flashlight urn and starts braining people with it.

This all builds to the post-WrestleMania reveal that (spoiler alert) Bulldog isn’t a fan favorite and actually still hates everyone, and would rather wear leather jackets and hang around with his extended Canadian family and be the second or third guy Stunnered in multi-pronged Stone Cold Steve Austin attacks.

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Best/Worst: Big Bad MMA

Ken Shamrock sits in on commentary for Billy Gunn vs. Aaron Ferguson, and has to be diplomatic as fuck while WWF guys attempt to save face by learning MMA holds on the fly. What you’re looking at in the picture is Billy Gunn trying to apply a juji gatame. He just sorta puts Ferguson’s arm between his legs (got it!) and kinda grazes Ferguson’s forearm with his palms. It’s weird. You’d think you wouldn’t have to explain the “hold the arm” part of a cross arm lock, but Gunn can’t break his pro wrestling training and is trying to like, pro wrestling arm bar him. You’re doing great, Bill.

By the way, if you’ve never seen Aaron Ferguson before, he looks exactly like “Depression” would if Depression was a character in Inside Out:

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Aaron Ferguson definitely trained for this Raw appearance by playing Nights into Dreams for 10 hours and downing a case of Mountain Dew. Dude looks like a water balloon somebody dropped on the ground. He’s probably the only person in the world that’d tap from the pressure of Billy Gunn’s wrestling jeans chaffing him while no pressure is applied.

Anyway, this is all to goad Ken Shamrock into the ring for an MMA exhibition. You just saw Billy Gunn’s attempt at shootfighting, so you can imagine how it goes.

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Shamrock immediately takes him down into a Fujiwara arm bar and taps him out, which (unless I’m mistaken) is the first-ever instance of “tapping out” on WWE TV. I can’t overstate the importance of Shamrock bringing that into the sport. Tapping out is such a great visual that instantly communicates something to an audience, and mercifully replaced the old method, “looking upset in a submission until the referee responds to nothing and calls for the bell.” Or the old “raise someone’s arm three times to try to rev them back into consciousness like they’re a generator.”

Unsatisfied with his impromptu Brawl for All performance — he’s certainly no BART Gunn — Billy tries it again. This time he ends up in an ankle lock, and has to tap out again. He goes crazy and grabs a chair and the referees stop him, probably because they don’t want him to end up getting choked to death with furniture.

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Best: THIS IS GAHDAHM BOLLSHIT

And now, one of the most unexpectedly important promos of the era.

– This week’s main event is supposed to be Bret Hart challenging Sycho Sid for the WWF Championship in a steel cage match. Early in the show, the announce team puts over some weird “rumors” about the match maybe NOT being for the Championship, because the Undertaker is unhappy with somebody else getting a shot before him, or whatever. There’s no drama to create here, but they try it anyway, saying Gorilla Monsoon had to catch a last minute flight to get to the arena to cut a backstage promo about the match they announced still being the match they announced. I don’t know.

– Bret Hart gets a promo early in the show to confirm this, explaining in the most self-centered way ever that he deserves the shot not only for winning the Royal Rumble (which he did, but technically didn’t), winning the Final Four (which actually won him the championship, which he lost the next night on Raw), and for being a former 4-time WWF Champion. Nothing he’s saying is a lie, really, but he’s so entitled and up his own ass about it you can’t help but want to shake him by his shoulders and tell him to stop being such a pissy baby.

– Shawn Michaels returns, as we mentioned, and is just gonna totally skip the line and sit in on the WWF Championship match so he can challenge whoever wins. It’s not going to help Bret’s case that the WWF is ALL ABOUT Shawn Michaels and will give him anything he wants, even make music videos about him, even when he fakes an injury and bails on the company before their biggest show of the year because he doesn’t like who he’s been booked to fake lose to. This “I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t” vibe is REALLY going to complicate Survivor Series.

So the match ends up happening, with the match itself being least important thing about it. The story here is that Bret Hart has a WrestleMania opponent (Steve Austin) and so does Sid (The Undertaker), so Austin and Taker try to interfere to keep the championship on the guy they’re supposed to fight. Everybody wants the championship. Remember when that was a thing? But yeah, Sid’s about to escape, so Austin runs out, climbs the cage and fights him back into it. Undertaker shows up to fight off Austin and keep BRET from winning, and ultimately smashes the cage door in Bret’s face just before he escapes. That lets Sid drop to the floor first, winning the match and miraculously falling like two feet without his leg snapping in half.

After the match, Vince tries to get a word with Bret. He gets several. Bret finally, officially snaps, launching into an uncensored, brutally narcissistic promo about everybody screwing him. It’s a MASTERPIECE. Watch:

“Frustrated isn’t the goddamn word for it! This is BULLSHIT! You screwed me, everybody screwed me and nobody does a goddamn thing about it! Nobody in the building cares, nobody in the dressing room cares, so much goddamn injustice around here, I’ve had it up to here! Everybody knows it! I know it! EVERYBODY knows it, I should be the World Wrestling Federation Champion! Everybody just keeps turning a blind eye, you keep turning a blind eye to it, I’ve got that Gorilla Monsoon, he turns a blind eye to it, everybody in that goddamn dressing room knows that I’m the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be! And if you don’t like it, tough SHIT!”

Here’s another angle of the promo:

Austin shows up on the TitanTron to scream at him for being such a crybaby, and things get so hot that everybody comes back out and starts brawling again. An underrated highlight here is Sid’s “I DON’T KNOW SHIT” on the ramp. Of course he doesn’t know shit, he’s got half the brain that you do.

So as we head into WrestleMania, we’ve got The Undertaker set to face an unfocused champion in the main event, and Bret Hart having to “slum it” in an undercard match against the hottest act in the company, where if he makes one wrong moral decision he’ll turn everybody in the building against him, and transform a mid-card heel into a folk hero of the people.

If you fell into a coma in 1996 and are just waking up, tune in next week to see if that happens.

Previously on the Best and Worst of vintage WWF Raw Is War: WrestleMania 13 happened. The Undertaker is your new WWF Champion, Stone Cold Steve Austin went to sleep in a pile of his own face blood and woke up a folk hero, and Bret Hart is really losing his mind. In other words, shit just got real.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know if you think Canada is better or worse than America.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for March 24, 1997.

Best: Laying The Foundation

The fact that this week’s Raw opens with 10 minutes of the Head Bangers* is irrelevant. The important note here is that they’re facing The British Bulldog and Owen Hart, who finally, finally come to blows after months of “will they, won’t they,” and get disqualified. That leads to a post-match challenge that sets up Owen vs. the Bulldog in a rematch for the European Championship next week. That match isn’t the forever-classic the original is, but — spoiler alert — it does end with a shocker and set up the foundation (pun intended) of maybe the best angle of the decade. You’ll see that start to come together more later in this episode.

*I get a lot of comments that are like, “I don’t understand why you hate the Head Bangers, I LOVED them as a kid!” That’s all well and good, friends, but when I was a kid I loved The Juicer and Erik Watts. My love for them doesn’t erase the fact that one was a child-pandering living jean jacket doing a Beetlejuice parody and the other couldn’t clear a kneecap on a dropkick. I loved the Wuzzles when I was a kid, too, but I’m not gonna turn off Westworld to watch it today, you know?

Worst: Chyna’s Phantom Interference

Match two is Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Bart Gunn, and if you know anything about Bart Gunn, you know his presence in a match against even the best opponent makes Head Banger Mosh vs. Head Banger Thrash look like Bret vs. Owen.

The only thing I really want to point out here is the finish, which is supposed to be Bart hitting the ropes, Chyna pulling down the top rope, Bart spilling to the floor and getting beaten up before being fed back in to eat a Pedigree. This is great in theory, but in practice … well, look at the screencap. That’s as close to “pulling down the top rope” as Chyna gets. So Bart just hits the ropes diagonally, falls over them by himself without any provocation and bumps to the floor. The announce team is like LOOK AT IT, LOOK AT CHYNA LADIES AND JENNAMEN, and they even show a slow motion replay of her not doing it. It’s sad and hilarious, a true illustration of Bart Gunn. If we weren’t all brought together as a nation by his depressing head bobble in his fight with Butterbean, I’d say it was the most Bart Gunn.

H wins, and that’s pretty much it. He’s finally got Chyna to give him some heat, but he’s stuck in a holding pattern until somebody figures out that Shawn Michaels should be dropping trou and pointing at his dick every week.

Worst: Literally An Episode Of Power Rangers

Look, as a person whose two favorite things in pro graps history are Lucha Underground and the ’90s WCW cruiserweights, I’m the last person who’s going to dismiss lucha libre as “Power Rangers” fighting.

That said, look at these fuckin’ teenagers with attitude:

They all look exactly the same, but with different coloring. Like at any point they could stop doing bad arm drags and form the Megazord.

If you’re interested, the match is El Mosco, Hysteria and Abismo Negro versus Venum, Super Nova and Discovery. You may remember Abismo Negro as the richer man’s version of WCW’s Galaxy. Hysteria is probably the most underrated cartoon of all time, and El Mosco is where Muslim people pray when they’re in Mexico. On the other side we’ve got Super Nova, who I’m 99% sure is not Simon Dean in a mask, teaming with Discovery (who is a space shuttle, I think) and “Venum,” whose finisher is avoiding copyright infringement.

Like every WWF luchador thing ever, they just mindlessly do high spots while the crowd sits on their hands. Venum is particularly busting his ass here, but unless Ahmed Johnson showed up and hit one of them with a plank of wood, nobody would react. Dude’s doing a top rope Asai moonsault to the floor and the crowd gives a polite “oh!” before doing the 1997 version of checking their phones, which is … talking to each other, I guess? I honestly don’t remember. Winding their watches?

The highlight of the match, honestly, is Bret Hart showing up in the picture-in-picture complaining about how they promised him time to explain what happened at WrestleMania 13 and it hasn’t happened yet. Blue Ranger Billy pins Black Ranger Zack after a jumping nothing. Isn’t it weird seeing WWE not knowing what the hell to do with cruiserweights? Hoo boy, that’d never happen today.

Worst: How Are They Making Too Cold Scorpio Boring?

Speaking of the company not knowing what the shit to do with anyone with a vertical leap that could clear a gym mat, here’s Flash Funk getting a quick squash win over the Brooklyn Brawler.

If you’re coming into these cold and somehow have zero history with WWE television programming, here’s our first look (in a while, at least) at the Brawler. His gimmick is that he’s a tough-ish homeless man (?) who lives in Yankee Stadium and tries to beat people up, but fails. He’s like one of the thugs Batman would beat up during a bank heist or whatever before an actual villain revealed himself. He’s that ultimate level of 1980s jobber where he’d occasionally get a match against another jobber and win, just to make his constant losing against accomplished people seem valid. The Internet Wrestling Database has him at 22-283, which is woefully incomplete but a good sample of his win/loss record.

Flash wins in about three minutes, and Vince spends more time going “OH MY!!!” at black girls existing than he does trying to get Flash over.

by sanny1001

Best: Best Heel Turn Promo Ever

Oh my God, this is glorious.

Two weeks ago on Raw, Bret Hart lost a WWF Championship match to Sid and went absolutely apeshit, letting months of mounting frustrations finally explode and cursing a bunch on live television. At WrestleMania 13, Bret made Stone Cold Steve Austin pass out in a pool of his own blood, but kept trying to attack his unconscious body because the crowd reaction wasn’t unanimous enough. He was a good guy driven to the point of absolute stifled madness by existing in a world populated by increasingly rewarded and beloved jerks. Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold, Sid, you name it. WWF crowds are cheering these assholes and psychopaths and Bret’s out here just trying to stay the most popular guy by nodding politely and doing really great armbars. WWF crowds think he’s a crybaby and a brat for wanting things to be the way they’ve always been, and for wanting to get the same reactions he used to get for doing the same stuff.

Here, Bret masterfully cuts a babyface and a heel promo at the same time. It’s BRILLIANT. He dissects every single moment since his return from semi-retirement on a cruise ship, completely justifying himself from his point of view. BECAUSE he’s justified, and also because he’s being kind of a dick about it, AND because he’s taking forever, the crowd keeps turning on him. He’s like, “yeah, but what about this. Yeah, but what about this? Yeah, but what about this?” And he’s 1000% right. BUT HE SUCKS. I like the credit Jesse Ventura for my bullshit contrarian fandom, but Bret had a lot to do with it, too. For the first time I was like, “wow, I get where he’s coming from.” And then Austin was super dynamic and dangerous and exciting, and I could pick either side and enjoy everything. I wish they did that more often. Put effort into both sides!

So what it boils down to is that Bret apologizes to everyone in the world except the United States, because the fans in the United States are trog idiots or whatever who didn’t support him. This becomes a once-in-a-lifetime setup where Bret is the biggest heel in the company when they’re in the U.S., and still a conquering babyface hero everywhere else. And Stone Cold suddenly represents America … he’s the strongest, most cunning and most dangerous force in the world but he’s also kinda pyscho, culture-obsessed and up his own ass.

And speaking of that …

Shawn Michaels interrupts to hit the two most American talking points there are:

1. This is America, you can love it or you can just get out
2. We here in America have this little thing called the FIRST AMENDMENT, which allows us to say anything and do anything and it’s fine, shut up

It’s a “yeah, tell him!” moment if you’re that kind of American, and if you aren’t, you kinda want to see Bret kicked him in the leg and figure four him on the ring post. Shawn and Bret go into their quasi worked-shoot stuff that will definitely not end badly for one of them, which culminates in Shawn telling Bret he’s gay for looking at him in Playgirl. Bret then kicks him in the leg and figure-fours him on the ring post. Oh, hey!

This is all so, so good. And now Bret’s got two psychotically obsessed adversaries; Shawn Michaels, representing the devil may care attitude of 1997 American pop culture, and Stone Cold Steve Austin, who wants to beat him to death with whatever’s lying around and everyone loves him for it. He’s going to need some backup. More on that next week.

Eeeeee.

Best: Bret Hart Vs. The Rock, Part 1

While Shawn is being carried away to a local medical facility where his First Amendments Rights will get him free medical care or whatever, Bret sticks around to do commentary and “explain himself” again during Rocky Maivia vs. Leif Cassidy. I’m glad he’s here, because Pre-Crisis Rock vs. Pre-Crisis Al Snow with no Bret Hart might’ve put me in a coma.

The best part here is that Vince is absolutely DISTRAUGHT at Bret beating up his inamorato Shawn Michaels and won’t stop screaming at him about how it’s “destroying his legacy.” YOUR LEGACY IS IN THE TOILET, BRET! IN THE TOILET! IN THE TOILET! IT’S IN THE TOILET! Eventually Bret’s like, “you know what, fuck all y’all” and jumps in the ring to try to break Rocky Maivia’s leg, too. The man is totally unhinged, in the best way; the world won’t stop changing around him, and now that he knows he can’t talk it into stopping, he has to try to do it physically. Burn it down and start over.

This sets up next week’s main event of BRET HART VS. THE ROCK, which is sadly like a year in the wrong direction both ways from being a classic.

Best: The Ahmed Johnson Vs. Nation Of Domination Feud Is Finally Ending!
Worst: (Not Really)

In very less important news, the Nation of Domination ruins another Ahmed Johnson match via disqualification and end up making a deal: they’ll participate in one final match where if they lose, they’ll disband. At least, I think that’s what they agreed to. They salute about it and Ahmed makes “well, there you go” gestures at them, but nobody including the announce team is sure what’s going on. But to be fair, Ahmed Johnson could be standing in a desert pointing at a pool of water and you wouldn’t be able to understand what he’s trying to say.

As you might’ve guessed, this blowoff match leads to them feuding for another entire year, then deciding to team up. Because the booking meeting never got farther than, “DQ finish followed by pajama board fights.”

LOL: Leather Cowboy Chef The Undertaker

The Bret Hart segment(s) went way long, so the show ends with an Undertaker promo that just kinda ends before it gets going. Here’s what you need to know:

– Paul Bearer has abandoned Mankind and wants to be friends with the Undertaker again, possibly because he’s WWF Champion now
– The Undertaker decided to celebrate his championship win by buying a leather cowboy hat, and looking like I’d imagine Rob Zombie sees himself when he looks in a mirror
– Mankind is suddenly the #1 contender somehow, despite having spent the last few months in the tag team division and getting counted-out at WrestleMania

Paul interrupts Undertaker to plead for his forgiveness, Mankind interrupts Bearer’s interruption like, mid-interruption to scream over it about wanting Bearer back, and Vince just throws it to La Femme Nikita. They get a little more time to explain it next week, which is helpful, because they’ve announced that the next PPV is called “Revenge of the Taker,” and he suspiciously doesn’t have anything to get revenge about yet.

SEE YOU THEN.

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: After what happened at WrestleMania 13, Bret Hart decided that American wrestling fans are full of shit and can kiss his ass. He’s got a point. Shawn Michaels, representing the most American parts of America, responded with “we have a thing called FREE SPEECH” and “if you don’t like it, you can just gyettt out!” He also revealed that the kitty said, “tough titty,” which was weird.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what it should say on Bret Hart’s tombstone. Stone Cold Steve Austin has thoughts on that later in the program..

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for March 31, 1997.

Best: Raw Is Like A Thorn In Your Eye

The March 31, 1997 edition of Raw is the first to use ‘Thorn In Your Eye’ by WWE Superstars & SlamJam, our choice for the best Raw intro theme ever. Finally, Raw is War is Raw is War.

One day we’ll find out the real lyrics, which are definitely not the “I’ve seen the donut” version you can on wrestling lyric sites. I’ve always sung SOUL OF BEEF! and I’m not gonna stop now.

WWE Network

Best: Applying Foundation

The first and most important thing to happen on this week’s episode is another good-to-great Owen Hart vs. British Bulldog European Championship match that ends as a No Contest due to a mutually agreed-upon STERN TALKING-TO. Not sure “the match was thrown out due to lecture” has a classification in the record books, but whatever.

Bulldog and Owen are about to kill each other with a steel chair when Bret slides in, diffuses the situation and launches into another amazing promo about how American wrestling fans have turned them against each other because they hate families and love Jerry Springer. It’s so good:

It’s also incredibly Canadian, with Bret pronouncing “Owen” like “Oy” and saying he stood up to one of Oy’s teachers when he was just “tur-teen.” Everybody’s perfect here, but especially Owen Hart. Dude is fake crying into his singlet because his brother reminded him that he used to dress him before school, and because he and Bret are the only people in his family who are actually good at wrestling. The crowd boos them the entire time, which perfectly illustrates Bret’s point: they don’t want to see people getting along and treating each other well, they want them at each other’s throats and smashing each other in the face with chairs. They end up group-hugging, and Bret side-eyes the entire crowd in spectacular fashion. Look at this thing:

WWE Network

Brutal. “You live in the UNITED STATES. You don’t know what it’s like to have a BROTHER-IN-LAW.”

This sets the tone for the remainder of the evening, with Shawn Michaels fanboy Vince McMahon being all, “you have to question the motives,” and former Bret Hart hater Jerry Lawler being moved to contemplative tears. Sunny shows up for color commentary and has to cradle Lawler’s head to make sure he’s okay.

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Which is good timing, because the next match is WWE Cruiserweights. I wish I had someone to cradle me during these things. These guys would try an inside cradle and end up getting hit by a train.

WWE Network

Worst: Have Merced

This week we get our first look at EL MOSCO, “the mosquito.” His mask has a mosquito nose, but other than that he looks exactly like every other luchador WWF has brought in in 1997. Mexico really had a fire sale on black body suits with colorful armor panels. He faces Super Nova, who is blue, and that’s 100% of the character development we’re given. Hope you like the blue guy! Jim Johnston can’t tell them apart either, and gives every tecnico the same Mexico Guy music.

It’s honestly amazing how little anyone in the arena cares about this. The crowd is so quiet you can practically hear the wrestlers breathing. At one point Super Nova hits Mosco with a springboard into a sunset flip powerbomb and it’s just nothing. Zero reaction. It’s like wrestling’s not even happening. The announce team is so disinterested in explaining who these guys are or why they’re fighting that they spend most of the match going over the tour schedule, and we get two cutaways to Sunny hanging out with the announce team, entertaining herself. She goes over to the Spanish announce team and tells them the Spanish she knows. Vince is like, “this is a unique brand of excitement!” but he’s not gonna tell you what that brand is or why anybody’s excited about it.

The highlight is Super Nova going for a twisting nothing onto nobody.

WWE Network

Mosco hits a powerbomb and a terrible Arabian press for the win. The connection the AAA wrestlers have with the 1997 WWF audience makes Savio Vega look like Stone Cold Steve Austin.

WWE Network

Worst: May I Take Your Order

Speaking of Savio, he and Crush team up to take on the powerhouse team of Mike Bell and Adam O’Brien. You may remember Bell as that guy Perry Saturn wrecked for messing up a snapmare. O’Brien looks like a homeless Matt Hardy who fashioned his singlet out of an abandoned circus tent. The good news is that he grows up to be five-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion, former PWG Champion and current WWE Performance Center trainer “Scrap Iron” Adam Pearce. It’s a rare win for the Nation, and somehow doesn’t end with Ahmed Johnson in with a pile of lumber and awkwardly javelining it at everybody.

During the match, Shawn Michaels calls in from what sounds like a Burger King drive-through to say he’ll be back next week to confront Bret Hart about loving his family. THIS IS AMERICA, YOU EITHER HIT YOUR WIFE’S HUSBAND WITH A CHAIR OR YOU CAN JUST GYYYYET OUT.

WWE Network

Worst: The Two Awkward Trials of Jesse James

The Real Double J Jesse James — spelled “Jammes” sometimes, which makes me want to say he’s JESSE JAMMIES — takes on Jerry Fox, who looks like somebody bought Billy Kidman’s mom half a pair of Zubaz pants. Jammies gets two incredibly awkward moments:

1. During his entrance, Jesse brings out “six-year old guest manager Nathan Arnold,” a disinterested child in a Snoopy sweater, because I guess dude is leaving his career up to a pissed-off first-grader. Look at him, he looks like he’s on a death march. Jammies brings Nathan into the ring and awkwardly forces him around and croons to him about how he’s super horny and can’t wait to get home and fuck his country girlfriend. He puts his hat on Nathan at the end, and Nathan leaves as quickly as possible. Jammies stands around like, “wasn’t that great,” and everyone in the building is like, “why did that baby need to know about the Road Dogg’s booty call?”

2. After the match, the Honky Tonk Man presents Jammies with a “hair-loom” guitar and says he wants him to be the new Honky Tonk Man.

WWE Network

This gets weirdly sexual too, with Jammies talking about how he’s “breathless for a couple of reasons” right now and Honky talking about how much he wants to “consummate” the relationship. Because WWF babyfaces, Road Dogg leads Honky on and makes him think he’s going to play the guitar only to smash it. Gasp. Honky looks legitimately distraught at having a family guitar destroyed, and honestly he didn’t actually do anything to deserve it. He was being really nice and offering dude an opportunity. Jammies was like, “no thanks, asshole, I’m letting this SIX-YEAR OLD take me to the top!” Remember kids, in WWF logic if you’ve ever been a jerk before, you’re a jerk forever, and if you’ve already gotten beaten up for something you’ve done, you deserve endless beatings on top of that while people laugh at you. Because you’re NOT POPULAR and you should be ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

WWE Network

Best/Worst: The Corny As Fuck PG-Ass Road Warriors Insults Of The Week

If you’re a regular reader, you may recall that despite being two giant muscular gang members from Chicago in spiked shoulder-pads, the Legion of Doom are actually two cornball dads with no creativity who think it’s rude to say words like “damn” and “ass” on TV. So they come up with the hokiest, least threatening ways you’ve ever heard to say they’re going to beat someone up.

This week, they’re threatening to knock the “doggy dumplings” out of the British Bulldog. Snootchie bootchies! After that, they promise to, “stinking kick the phlegm out of every corpuscle in that stinky Owen Hart’s stinky body.”

YouTube

I’d like to know whether or not Road Warrior Hawk thinks Bret Hart is “poopy,” honestly.

WWE Network

Best: Undertaker Gets Revenged

Since WrestleMania they’ve been talking about how the next pay-per-view is called “In Your House: Revenge of the Taker,” but they haven’t explained exactly what he’s trying to get revenge for. Long story short, here’s a picture of the Undertaker being BURNED ALIVE.

Paul Bearer shows up to do the segment they ran out of time to do last week, where he says he’s sorry for everything and wants to be Undertaker’s manager/family friend who is secretly harboring a half-son in the basement/urn handler/whatever. Undertaker hasn’t forgotten the past year or so of Bearer hitting him in the face with funerary vases and hiring folks like Vader and Mankind to come kill him, and he knows Bearer only wants back in now because he’s WWF Champion again. So he strings him along a little and then punches him in the face. It’s exactly like the Double J/Honky Tonk Man segment, only with like, characters and reasons.

Mankind creeps out from under the ring and tosses a fireball in Taker’s face. See, it was a trap! Taker was validated in striking first! Honky didn’t have Billy Gunn crawl out of the hole in his guitar and try to waterboard Jesse Jammies or whatever. Sid shows up to run Mankind off, which sets up Sid vs. Mankind for next week. I mean, unless Sid has something better to do.

WWE Network

Worst: Way To Ban The Valets From Ringside

Goldust takes on Triple H in a match where Marlena and Chyna are both “banned from ringside,” allowing the men to finally, truly go one-on-one and see who the better man is. And then right before Goldust wins, Chyna just walks down to ringside, calmly climbs in the ring and kicks Goldust in the ribs drawing a DQ. So by “banned from ringside” did you mean “we told them not to come to ringside on the honor system,” or what? Don’t y’all have a bunch of security types who could’ve in theory seen a woman banned from ringside walking out onto the stage? Or when they see her slowly walking to the ring down the big ramp in the center of the goddamn arena and like, stood between her and the ring? Or a referee who could’ve walked over and told her to leave when she was slowly climbing in and nonchalantly walking over to boot a guy in the gut?

Anyway, the highlight here is Vince McMahon clarifying the Undertaker’s injuries, saying he’s learned Undertaker suffered burns in his “facial area.” Word?

WWE Network

Best: He Didn’t Quit

Before the main event, Vince McMahon stands around nervously while interviewing Stone Cold Steve Austin, who has a big bandage on his head still and wants to clarify a few things about the ‘I Quit’ match at WrestleMania.

1. He never actually said “I quit,” he didn’t even do the Tully Blanchard thing where he said “yes”; he passed out, and Ken Shamrock is a piece of trash for calling the match instead of like, waking him up and letting him continue.

2. Bret is bragging about leaving Austin a bloody mess, but Bret didn’t actually bust him open … Austin busted HIMSELF open when he fell into the guard rail. And yeah, Bret helped with momentum, but semantics are important when you’re a crazy threatening redneck.

3. Austin doesn’t care if you put him in the ring with a good guy (air quotes) and the fans boo him, or with a bad guy (air quotes) and people cheer him, he’s going to arbitrarily beat people’s asses. It’s the much easier to cheer for version of Shawn Michaels and/or John Cena’s “some of y’all like me, some of y’all don’t, when you buy a ticket to a WWE brand event you are allowed to cheer or boo whoever you want!”

4. He promises that the next time he and Bret get into the ring, he’s going to leave Bret looking ten times worse than Bret left him looking at Mania. Bret shows up on the TitanTron to rightfully be like, “I beat you twice by myself, I’m hanging out with my family now but there are two big instances of me destroying you and leaving you helpless so back off maybe.” Austin responds with the wonderfully macabre line, “One of these days I’m gonna look down at your grave, and it’s gonna say, ‘here lies Bret the Hitman Hart, the biggest piece of crap that ever walked the face of the earth, and the reason he’s laying here is because Steve Austin whipped his pink and black ass.” Man, I hope Bret Hart’s a cool enough dude in real life to put that on his tombstone.

WWE Network

Best: Jim Ross Calls Rocky Maivia “The Rock”

Hey, that could stick.

This week’s main event is a dream match that isn’t exactly a dream yet because The Rock is still the chubbier, better, somehow less-likeable Prince Iaukea. It’s Rocky Maivia defending the Intercontinental Championship against Bret Hart. How great would this have been if we could’ve fast forwarded The Rock a few years?

It’s mostly another vehicle for chaos, with an ENRAGED BY FAMILY VALUES Bret Hart putting Rock in a figure-four on the ring post and refusing to let it go, getting himself disqualified. Stone Cold runs out and kicks him off, giving us a super funny “Steve Austin saving the Rock” moment in retrospect, and Owen and Bulldog run out to attack Austin. That brings out the BUTT-SNIFFING FRICKIN’ Road Warriors to even the sides, and we end the show with a 6-man brawl that cements Rocky Maivia as the least important person of seven in his own title match.

Next week: Sid gets busy (not like that), Austin pulls double duty (also not like that), Ken Shamrock mounts Vernon Wells (also also not like that) and Rockabilly debuts. In a sexual way.

WWE Network

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Bret Hart ended an Owen Hart vs. British Bulldog match by hugging everyone and reforming the Hart Foundation with an anti-American fan slant. The Real Double J made a kid uncomfortable and insulted the Honky Tonk Man, some luchadors nobody remembers did jumping spinning nothings, and The Undertaker got his face burned by a fireball.

Note: Our holiday time off put these columns a little behind schedule, so this will be the first of two this week to catch up. Look for the 4/14/97 episode on With Spandex on Friday, followed by regularly scheduled programming on Monday and Wednesday next week.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what it should say on Bret Hart’s tombstone. Stone Cold Steve Austin has thoughts on that later in the program..

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for April 7, 1997.

WWE Network

Worst: The Legion Of Doom Get Sloppy

Up first this week is my favorite Best and Worst of vintage Raw running gag, “The Legion of Doom are terrible at insults.” If you aren’t familiar with this, the Road Warriors are two giant, muscular, violent dystopian street punks in spiked shoulder-pads who promise to end your life via bizarrely verbose, G-rated threats. Whereas most guys like this would say “I’m going to break your legs” or maybe, I don’t know, “I’m going to fucking murder you for real,” the Legion of Doom will be like, “we’re gonna give you the ol’ TWENTY-THREE SKIDOO in your STINKY WIENER!” The “rush” they’re always talking about comes from clean humor.

This week, we miss the entire finish of the Owen Hart and British Bulldog versus the Godwinns match because Hawk can’t say, “we’re going to hurt them,” he has to say, “what we are going to do is knock the ever so rancid bile right out of your bladders!” Road Warrior Hawk is the BLADDEST MAN ON THE PLANET.

To make matters worse, the LOD go straight from biological creative writing to interfering, trying to keep Owen and Bulldog from escaping the Godwinns’ slop bucket. But oh no, the heels move at the last minute and the Legion of Doom end up getting covered in Phineas and Henry’s ever-so rancid bile. That leads to a brawl between the stupid babyface teams, and like four backstage segments of Owen and Bulldog showing the replay and laughing about it.

Don’t worry, the Hart Foundation will eventually get their comeuppance. Or, as Hawk might put it, “A BUN IN THE HAND IS WORTH POO IN THE TUSH, TELL EM ANIMAL.”

WWE Network

Best/Worst: Rockabilly, Premiering Soon

You’ve been soooah good!

Last week, the Honky Tonk Man had a brain aneurysm of something and briefly decided that The Real Double J Jesse Jammes would be a good protege. He gave Jammes (who I’m still calling “Jammies”) a “hair-loom” guitar, which James dicked around with sarcastically before breaking in front of him. It was v. rude.

This week, Honky Tonk Man walks to the ring with Billy Gunn for Gunn’s match with Stone Cold Steve Austin. You think the point is supposed to be that Gunn is HTM’s new guy, but you quickly find out that Gunn hasn’t yet agreed to be the protege, and apparently Honky hasn’t even talked to him about it. Even though he walked to the ring with him? And it works out great, too, because Austin is hot fire and gives Gunn basically zero offense. For an apparent repackaging, Gunn just gets put through the wringer. It’s great. Austin just beats his ass. We find out why this was so one-sided a little later.

But yeah, after the match, Honky Tonk Man is like, “hey Billy Gunn, I’ve been watching you for a while now, and also I walked down to ringside with you like I was giving you away at a wedding, because I want you to be the new Honky Tonk Man. WHATTA YA SAY?” Gunn punches him in the face. You know a heel turn’s starting great when the heel that’s turning openly admits it’s a terrible idea before he turns.

WWE Network

Wither Sid?

So this week’s advertised main event is Sycho Sid vs. Mankind, but there’s a small problem … Sid isn’t here. He shoot no-showed the event claiming back problems, and the timing couldn’t be worse as like half the WWF’s roster is in South Africa. If you’re wondering why this column doesn’t have any pictures of Ahmed Johnson in turn of the century pajamas attacking people with lumber, there you go.

Gorilla Monsoon asks Stone Cold Steve Austin to fill in for Sid, because he’s the only comparable talent in the building. Austin is like, “I already wrestled, but if I fill in for Sid now to save your ass, you have to let me fill in for Sid at In Your House and fight Bret Hart again.” Monsoon agrees, because what, is he gonna book Mankind vs. L.A. Gore in the main?

It actually makes for a much better series of cards, and for booking on the fly it makes a lot of sense. WWF booking is never better than when plans change and they have to come up with something from nothing, instead of sitting on an idea for months, getting what they want, and choosing nothing.

WWE Network

Worst: Holy Shit, This Roster

If you want to know how bad the talent-to-jobber ratio is for this episode, here’s a picture-in-picture promo from MMA fighter Vernon White, who I keep calling “Vernon Wells,” during The Headbangers vs. Barry Horowitz and Freddie Joe Floyd. Good lord.

White is here to “shoot fight” Ken Shamrock in a mixed martial arts exhibition, which neither man is able to convincingly do. They just kinda stand there doing nothing until one of them throws a big slow CM Punk kick and the other side steps it. The crowd murmurs their way through it while Vince McMahon talks about how cage fighters know “ju-jitso” and are misunderstood by American fans.

Vernon busts himself open going forehead-first into the mat for no reason to avoid a takedown, and Shamrock punches him until he wins by tapout. The crowd has no idea what tapping out means yet. After the match, Vader interrupts Shamrock’s promo and kinda-sorta challenges him, which eventually leads to Shamrock’s first official WWF match and a glorious instance of two guys who are terrible at holding back losing control and just striking the shit out of each other.

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Vader faces Frank Stiletto. I guess he never got the memo.

Again, this is how impacted the roster is this week. FRANK STILETTO gets a match against Vader. And he looks just like you’d think a guy in 1997 named “Frank Stiletto” would look, too, with gross body hair on pasty skin, a crusty jobber mullet and underpants that say HANDSOME across the butt. If his catchphrase isn’t, “forget about it!” I’d be shocked.

This match didn’t work, because you can’t book a guy named Stiletto to be a face. He has to be a heel.

WWE Network

Worst: You Can’t Handle The Truth

Here’s the unofficial debut of the Truth Commission, the South African kinda-G.I. Joe military gang who tried to get over doing an anti-American gimmick like two weeks after Bret Hart turned heel and redefined anti-America gimmicks forever. Whoops!

This week we meet The Commandant. If you don’t remember him, don’t worry, he both debut and retired in 1997. He announces that next week’s Raw will happen in his home country of South Africa, shows some footage of Bret Hart carrying around a South African flag, and says that the Caucasians of Domination will teach the United States the true meaning of democracy. He doesn’t mention it here, but they’ll also teach us how a team can be objectively worse than Los Boricuas.

WWE Network

Best Worst: Shawn Michaels Is Such An A-Hole

The announce team hypes Bret Hart’s appearance alongside Bart Simpson on an issue of WWF Magazine which WWE Network can’t show for some reason, so we get lots of lingering wide shots of the crowd. Backstage, Shawn Michaels is like, “oh jeez Bret you know the Simpsons is a CARTOON, right?” Come on, Shawn, I know being on an episode of The Simpsons during its glory days is no cameo on Pacific Blue, but give him SOMETHING.

A huge portion of the show is dedicated to giving Shawn a live mic and letting him say whatever he wants about Bret Hart while Bret’s 9,000 miles away. You can imagine how it goes.

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With Bret gone, the story becomes that when Bret was Heavyweight Champion and Shawn was Intercontinental Champion, Shawn took a backseat to Bret and always supported him and wanted the WWF to be great and happy. When it was Shawn’s turn to be champion with Bret supporting him, Bret only did so “kicking and screaming,” used WCW as leverage against the world’s greatest man Vince McMahon, and wanted to see WWF fail without him. Shawn also claims WWF never did better business than they did in 1995-1996, which is … not super true. But now Bret only cares about the bottom line, and Shawn, the guy who just retired temporarily because he didn’t like wrestling anymore, cares the most about wrestling. It’s the kind of promo that either makes you want to punch Shawn in the back of the head.

If that’s not enough, he ends the promo by doing something that would piss Bret off … taking off his clothes and humping Vince. Vince gets a look on his face like senpai noticed him. The striptease is interrupted by Owen and Bulldog, who have only been in like five segments already and need to be in a sixth because Savio Vega and Marc Mero are in Africa.

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Best/Worst: Austin And Foley Do The Best They Can

I went with a wide shot of the main event, because with the limited roster, the booking plan was, “punch each other until everyone the crowd’s already seen returns.” So Austin and Mankind do their best aimless punching and brawling until the finish, which sees the Bulldog and Owen Hart come to the ring AGAIN, followed by the Legion of Doom, followed by Vader. Vader tries to body attack Austin from behind and accidentally hits Mankind, causing a further brawl, and nobody can keep them apartheid. Sorry, “apart.” Stupid autocorrect.

Next Week: Half of Raw comes to you from South Africa, where they don’t like flowers, Sid still isn’t around, and Crush main events. Hasa Diga Eebowai.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Sgt. Slaughter was named the new commissioner of the World Wrestling Federation, the Faarooq whipped Ahmed Johnson out of the Nation of Domination, and Shawn Michaels is openly bragging about how wrestling’s fake but he’s the best at it and won’t let them make him lose to anyone. 1997 in the house!

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re on the road to Ground Zero: In Your House, and then Badd Blood, where so much changes.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for August 11, 1997. The most important Raw ever.

Best: The Insurance Policy

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Two of the most important events of the Attitude Era happen in the same damn episode.

The first one involves Shawn Michaels, seen above reacting to a “Shawn is gay” chant that would’ve sent Rowdy Roddy Piper spiraling into existential crisis. Shawn is a week into a being a full-on heel again, so he’s turned the indoor sunglasses wearing and sarcastic gum chewing up to eleven.

Sgt. Slaughter shows up to force Shawn to face Mankind later tonight, so Shawn goes full “degenerate” for the first time, standing on his tip-toes to get in Slaughter’s face and wiping off spit every time Sarge hits a hard consonant. He’s like Dennis the Menace, if Dennis couldn’t stop chopping crotch at Mr. Wilson.

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Michaels ultimately agrees to be in the match, because he’s got an “insurance policy.” Yep.

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Throughout the show, Raw cameras interview Bixoli, Mississippi, fans about who they think will win the main event. It’s a nice collection of kids with hilarious southern accents, women having a camera on them for the first time in their lives, and extremely confident dudes with mouths straight out of the The Big Book of British Smiles. This guy was my favorite. He looks like a Beastie Boy’s skeleton and thinks Shawn Michaels is “like a piece of crap.”

If you ever read those Twitter scrolls on WWE shows and wonder how those people could be real, watch any of these old fan interviews. Put a camera on wrestling fans and reasonably I’d say 90% of them just throw their hands up and “woo,” give the number one at the camera, or say the first catchphrase or wrestling fact they can think of. Who will win, Shawn Michaels or Mankind? “SHAWN MICHAELS BECAUSE HE’S THE HEARTBREAK KID AND SWEET CHIN MUSIC!” I want to see a reality show where WWE lets a fan book the shows for a night, and it’s just creative sitting in a circle hastily scribbling notes while a guy in a Roman Reigns shirt yells “JOHN CENA SUCKS YOU CAN’T SEE ME, YEAH WOO” and does the hand in his face.

In the main event, Shawn and Mankind follow up one of the best matches of the decade with one of the best, most retroactively important and cripplingly underrated matches in Raw history.

If you’ve never seen it, take a minute to watch it. It’s great. It features borderline comedic giant garbage can spots, a backdrop onto a table covered in monitors and equipment you absolutely should not be backdropping someone onto, and this great flying elbow from the apron made greater by the camera only catching half of it:

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Just as the announce team is openly wondering where Shawn’s “insurance policy” is and whether or not he’s decided he could handle things on his own, a rich guy and his boydbuilder girlfriend show up and start hanging out at ringside.

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The best part is that Helmsley and Chyna already hate Mankind, so nobody’s sure if they’re out here as the insurance policy or just to get revenge on Mick. They don’t make much of a difference, either, until the finish. Jim Ross starts screaming, LOOK AT THE RAMP, LOOK AT THE RAMP.

On the ramp:

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Ravishing Rick Rude is back. If you’re a modern fan and not totally familiar with Rick Rude’s work, first of all, get familiar with Rick Rude’s work you fucking philistine. Second of all, here’s what you need to know: God made the concept of pure masculinity in all its highs and lows into one extremely jacked man with a mustache and granted it two powers. One, he was very good at airbrushing. Two, if he kissed you, you fainted. He was so good at his job he made me feel sexually unsure about myself when I was six years old. I didn’t even know what sex was, but I was like, “welp, I’m not good enough!” He was so easy to hate because he was so much better at MAN than literally everyone else.

With the insurance policy complete, the plan springs into action. Chyna gets on the apron to distract the referee. Helmsley distracts Mankind, and Rude goddamn murders him with a steel chair to the face. Michaels wins, and a new generation’s about to take over the company. Again.

Best:

After the match, The Undertaker’s dong interrupts things and the Dead Man shows up to even the odds. That causes Paul Bearer to once again show up on the TitanTron and scream about how Kane’s coming and Taker’s gonna “burn in Hell.” To illustrate this, he turns the lights red again and, for the first time, this happens:

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This Raw is so good that the first appearance of Kane’s Hellfire and Brimstone is the third most important happening. Hell, the formation of D-Generation X isn’t even the most important. What is, you ask?

This GIF Of Hawk Spanking A Steel Drum That I’m Not Going To Contextualize

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Best: Just Kidding, It’s Rocky Maivia Turning Heel

You wouldn’t think a “Chainz” match would involve one of the most important moments of the era, but here we are.

During the match, referee Jack Doan gets grazed by someone’s shoulder and goes into anaphylactic shock. Chainz appears to have the match won with an unbelievably terrible running elbow drop, but there’s no one to count. Out of the crowd bounds “blue chipper” Rocky Maivia in a vertically striped shirt that accidentally makes him look like a referee. We haven’t seen Rocky for a while due to his aborted Prince Iaukea push that was so bad it had fans chanting for his death.

Rocky — called “The Rock” by Jim Ross for the first time — acts like he’s trying to help the referee, then lays out Chainz with a Rock Bottom. Faarooq gets the win, and after the match, Rocky officially joins the Nation of Domination. Next week, “The Rock” delivers his first heel promo, and a star is born. All the guy needed to go from a black hole of charisma to The Most Electrifying Man In Entertainment is the ability to say “fuck you” to the people telling him to die.

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Triple H joins D-Generation X and The Rock joins the Nation of Domination in the same episode. From here on, their careers are indelibly linked until today, when those “Rock and Ronda Rousey vs. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon” rumors are about to kick in again heading into a WrestleMania. Triple H vs. The Rock is forever, and it was fate.

So now, back to this GIF of Hawk spanking an oil drum, which I unfortunately have to contextualize.

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Worst: The Country Whippin’ Match

The Legion of Doom are locked in this feud with the Godwinns, because I guess someone at WWE was like, “people love the Road Warriors, right? What if we make them fight a couple of pissed-off Confederate farmers for six months?”

The feud continues on this episode with a “Country Whippin’ Match,” which is more or less a battle royal where to eliminate your opponent, you have to whip them to the floor. I don’t know. They don’t know either, because the Legion of Doom wins the match by knocking the Godwinns to the floor with a bucket. C’mon, they had a lot to put together for this episode, they don’t have time to explain why a whip’s a bucket.

Worst: The New Kids On The Blecch

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This week’s attempt at a Light Heavyweight division is mostly about picture-in-picture of Brian Pillman in the locker room, stomping around in his underpants upset that Sgt. Slaughter’s making him wrestle in a dress again. He ends up wrestling in (and losing) a depressing match with Flash Funk via roll-up thanks to Goldust. It’s an awful shame that the last couple of months of Brian Pillman’s career and life were him trying to wrestle through debilitating injuries while everyone made fun of him.

Anyway, the light heavyweight match you see happening in the much, much smaller picture is Scott Putski versus Tony Williams. Williams is the guy in the cow print panties the announce team calls “checkered.” Putski is the one who looks like somebody tried to stuff the Ultimate Warrior into a sausage casing.

Fun note: Tony Williams is here because he used to be Brian Christopher’s tag team partner in the USWA, when they were “The New Kids,” a New Kids on the Block-themed team in zebra pants. If that sounds like the most 1980s wrestler possible, it gets better … when Williams turned heel, he went from being the most ’80s guy in history to the most ’90s guy in history, putting on a compression shirt and a chain, gelling up his Caesar cut and calling himself, I shit you not, KID WIKKED. Watch that promo. It’s like Buff Bagwell had a baby with TNA Original AJ Styles.

Putski wins the match by standing upright for three minutes without falling over, and everyone telling him he did a good job.

Best/Worst: Patriot Games

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With Stone Cold Steve Austin on the shelf, the America vs. Canada beef that was the best part of so many Raws this year has lots a little of its shine. Now instead of Austin, we’re asked to put our fandom behind The Patriot. Patriot isn’t a bad wrestler, really, but going from this weirdly identifiable, noble hillbilly serial killer we’ve warmed to over years thanks to great promos and amazing matches to a guy dressed like the American flag we’ve only known for a couple of weeks was a pretty big leap to expect us to make.

Patriot and Ken Shamrock team up to get a win over Owen Hart and the British Bulldog by turning their own cheating against them. Bret Hart shows up to distract Shamrock, Owen tries to sneak a chair into the ring, and The Patriot uses his peripheral xenophobia to slam Owen onto it.

After the match, Patriot tries to cut a promo about how Bret Hart’s not unbeatable, so Bret attacks him from behind and kicks his ass. The Patriot comes back out after that to interrupt a Sable promo — a Sable “walking?” A Sable something — to cut another promo about Bret. Bret’s response? Send the entire Hart Foundation out to kick his ass again. When they’re done putting the boots to him, they drape him in the Canadian flag like he’s dead. Although I guess Canadians put “boats” to you, not “boots.”

A hell of a show, overall. Next week, the upswing in chaotic quality continues with The Rock’s first great promo, Brian Pillman taking the Goldust angle too far, D-X teaming up for the first time and more. And then Raw misses two weeks due to the U.S. Open. Whoops!

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Everybody fought, Taka Michinoku fought a kitty cat, and Stone Cold Steve Austin kicked a field goal with Jerry Lawler’s crown. Also, Brian Pillman revealed that being forced into sexual slavery for a month turns you into a Suicide Girl.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re on the road to Badd Blood, a pay-per-view that makes a really deep cut.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for September 22, 1997.

Before We Begin, You Need To Know That A Freddie Blassie Hologram Has Trapped Sable In A Running Man Scenario In Which She’s A Secret Agent Forced Into Laser Tag Duels

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No, seriously.

Behold the wonder that is Sable’s Secret Mission, which I assume is the prequel to Torrie Wilson’s Big Apple Takedown. Sable, on a secret mission, wanders into “Dr. Evil Madman’s Lazer Tag.” It’s a giant Freddie Blassie face in an eyepatch. Also, per the sign, pedestrians aren’t allowed in here.

But yeah, the Reverend Dr. Evil Madman forces Sable to do laser tags with Howard Finkel, who is still trying to make public announcements while he battles? And also referee Tim White is there to administer some Three Stooges-style shenanigans? There’s a whole backstory with these, including a separate mission where the good Reverend Dr. Evil Madman Esquire freezes Wildman Marc Mero and Sable has to … uh, help Marc Mero get heat? These got pretty real.

Join us in the coming weeks as we hope to put this narrative together. Hope this doesn’t become a Blonde Bytch Project!

Worst: They Don’t Know What They’ve Got

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A few weeks ago, Rocky Maivia turned heel. A week later, he cut his first heel promo. Then he wasn’t on very much for a couple of weeks, and here he is cleanly losing an Intercontinental Championship Tournament first round match to oft-injured bridesmaid-ass Ahmed Johnson. It takes a while for these things to ramp up, sometimes. It took Austin 3:16 from May until November (or, arguably, the next summer) to really become a thing. The “yes movement” had a WrestleMania between the one where the “yes” chants took over and the one where the “yes” chants were encouraged.

I was gonna make a joke about Ahmed Johnson injuring himself again, but then he does it for real by being the only person in wrestling history to cut himself on an errant nail in the announce table. Later in the show he does a run-in with his hand all bandaged up, and has to do these hilarious overhead punches with a diaper hand. Meanwhile, Maivia is getting loud “ROCKY SUCKS” chants, and the Madison Square Garden crowd is connecting to him and booing everything he does. Really happy they figure this one out.

Oh, and speaking of guys always getting injured, you may notice in the graphic that despite losing to Ken Shamrock last week, Faarooq has somehow advanced in the tournament. That’s because Faarooq and the Nation attacked Shamrock after the match and gave him the dreaded and trademarked Ken Shamrock Internal Bleeding™. New rule: if you lose, injure the guy who beat you and they’ll have to pretend you won.

Everybody Fights!

It wouldn’t be the vintage Best and Worst of Raw without everybody fights, shining a spotlight on 1997 WWE’s favorite trope: ending a match with everybody’s friends running out and punching each other in and around the ring until a commercial break.

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Up first this week is the Legion of Doom vs. Faarooq and Kama Mustafa, which ends with — get this — a Nation of Domination run-in. D’Lo Brown and Rocky Maivia interfere to prevent a Doomsday Device, and it becomes a 4-on-2 attack. That brings out ol’ tampon hand Ahmed Johnson, who throws wad and really wishes he’d worn an elbow pad on his hand that night. He’s quickly overwhelmed, because he has the proportionate strength and speed of a pre-wiped ass, so half a dozen referees have to run out and stop the Nation. Nothing stands up to separatism like seeing black and white united on the chest of laser tag henchman Tim White!

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What’s good for the mid-card is good for the main event, so this week’s final segment is ALSO everybody fights.

Bret Hart taps out depressed bad decision machine Goldust (more on him later) to a Sharpshooter, but he’s a dick, so he won’t let it go. Shawn Michaels runs out and attacks him from behind to break it up, and Triple H shows up to help. That brings out Owen Hart to make it 2-on-2, and so many people start doing run-ins that they begin overlapping, like when a fast guy almost passes his teammate on a base-clearing double. British Bulldog tries to run-in, but he’s injured, so Rick Rude runs in right alongside him and kicks him in the leg. That triggers the long-awaited return of Natalya’s … I wanna say uncle? Definitely her uncle, Jim Neidhart. Bret is the dad, I watch Smackdown.

That eventually brings out the Undertaker, who brawls a little before ending the fight by chokeslamming Bret and Shawn at the same time. The highlight is probably watching Rick Rude trying not to void his Lloyd’s of London insurance policy by desperately explaining to Jim Neidhart why they can’t battle-royal brawl.

Oh, also, did I mention that Shawn Michaels is European Champion now?

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Yep, that happened at One Night Only, their “restricted availability” British show. The win made Michaels WWE’s first “grand slam” champion, having held the WWF Heavyweight, Intercontinental, Tag Team and European Championships. Pretty soon that task got easier when they were like, “you can win either of the two heavyweight titles, either of the two tag team titles, either of the two secondary titles and either of the two tertiary titles.” You can spend a good weekend at the Impact tapings and come out a “grand slam champion,” but this was the first.

Best: Cactus, Jack

This episode features the all-time Raw classic debut of Cactus Jack, wherein Mankind and Dude Love agree (as separate human beings, seen speaking to one another) that they should step aside and let Cactus do their dirty work. Coming in after the SummerSlam cage match but before the next spring’s King of the Ring Hell in a Cell match, I think this is the one that connected with the most people and really took Foley to the next level as a WWF guy.

It’s still great. Watch it again, if you’ve got ten minutes. In a totally unexpected match in the middle of hour two of Raw you get Chyna clotheslining Cactus over the barrier into the crowd, Foley taking unprotected bodyslams on the floor backstage, fire extinguishers, the entire guardrail getting tipped over, Chyna getting mashed into the ring steps, backdrops onto the steel ramp and, of course, the now legendary piledriver on the table on the stage.

Maybe I’m biased from having loved him in WCW and then ECW, but Cactus Jack as a persona really tied Mick Foley together. Without him, you’ve got “the deranged” Mankind and faux-ironic Shawn Michaels Dude Love, and they both feel a little artificial. By tying in Foley’s past as a legitimate death match legend with a super serious and bloody pedigree, it put the other two characters into perspective and made them feel almost like “escapes” from Cactus. Mankind was the version that didn’t handle it as well, and as time went on, Mankind became a more palatable fan favorite than Dude Love, Dude Love got corrupted, and Cactus Jack never stopped being crazy as shit.

Great stuff. Maybe my favorite of their matches until H levels up and Royal Rumble 2000 happens.

Best: Owen Hart, Or

Worst: Goldust Is Making Some Really Bad Decisions

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On the Brian Pillman side of the Marlena angle, he’s indentured her in sexual servitude so long now that he’s basically dressing her in underwear and dragging her around by a dog collar with a chain on it. On the Goldust side, the announce team mentions that when this is all said and done, Goldust and Marlena plan to renew their wedding vows. Again, this point of this was that when they got to the wedding Marlena would flip the script and reveal that she’s actually been will Pillman all along, retroactively explaining away the grosser parts of this, but we didn’t get there … so it looks like Goldust’s response to watching his wife get abused on TV for a month is, “hey babe, when you’re done being abducted and raped for several weeks because I lost a wrestling match, let’s do something romantic!”

Pillman and Owen Hart face off in round one of the Intercontinental Championship Tournament, and it ends before it really gets going with a Goldust run-in. Goldust hits Owen on his way through and doesn’t actually get his hands on Pillman, so it counts as a DQ win for Owen. On a sad note, this ends up being Pillman’s last Raw match before he dies.

Owen, because he’s the greatest, goes on the microphone to brag about his victory and dedicates his tournament win to his brother Bret. Owen, brother, you are the opposite of the rest of this.

Best: It’s You, Austin, It Was You All Along

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The most important moment of the Owen promo becomes the aftermath. Owen brings a bunch of policemen to the ring to protect him from a random Stone Cold Steve Austin attack, and, sure enough, he attacks. He jumps Owen from behind during his promo and gets ready to FIGHT A BUNCH OF COPS, Observe and Report style. Vince McMahon gets into the ring to cool things down, and maybe for the only time in the history of Vince McMahon The Television Character approaches the situation with compassion and a cool head.

He’s seen what’s been going on with Austin since Owen tried to break his neck. He keeps showing up and getting the short end of the stick, getting put on a medical leave he doesn’t want or agree with and having the Intercontinental AND Tag Team Championship stripped from him. In response he’s hit a Stone Cold Stunner on Sgt. Slaughter, Jim Ross, and Jerry Lawler. Vince knows that if Austin puts his hand on non-wrestling real-life police officers, he’s going to jail, and it’s going to be a huge mess. Plus, you know, he loses his show’s biggest star.

So he gets in the ring and is like, “Hey Austin, I get it. You’re having a really hard time with the injury, and it’s really unfair to you that we’re keeping you off cards and taking away the championships you won. It sucks really bad. But you have to relax enough to at least not attack police officers, which can get you sent to prison in real life.” Again, it’s Vince approaching Austin like a human being for maybe the one and only time ever.

Austin’s response:

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Vince sells the Stunner like he died on the point of impact and is just a corpse now, Austin gets handcuffed and taken to jail for the first time — but definitely not the last — and what eventually becomes the most important and beloved storyline in WWE history, Austin vs. McMahon, is underway. By tbe end of November, McMahon would end up the most hated Lawful Evil in professional wrestling, and Fed fans would need a true Chaotic Neutral to bring him down.

And then they all swim in money for the next 20 years.

Next Week:

• Vince McMahon gives Stone Cold Steve Austin some options
• D-X “sells” for the Hart Foundation
• Sable defeats the Tag Team Champions in a handicap laser tag match
• Mike Chioda gets pimp-slapped by a diaper hand

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Shawn Michaels won the European Championship at One Night Only, Stone Cold Steve Austin gave Vince McMahon the Stone Cold Stunner for the first time, and Freddie Blassie used a hologram to trick Sable into playing laser tag with Howard Finkle. No, that last one’s not a Lucha Underground joke.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here. We’re on the same week again, finally!

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re on the road to Badd Blood, which used to be called Madd Love. Take a look what they’ve done.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for September 29, 1997.

Best: Rick Rude Tells Vince McMahon What’s About To Happen To His Face On National Television

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Raw opens with Vince McMahon interviewing D-Generation X — not their actual name yet, as they tried to name themselves the “Triple Threat,” complete with ECW Triple Threat hand gesture — to bring out Sgt. Slaughter and set up Triple H vs. The Undertaker as the main event. It’s pretty funny that the go-home for Shawn vs. Taker in Hell in a Cell was Triple H losing to Undertaker, and then the end of the 4-part Undertaker vs. DX epic WrestleMania story was Shawn losing to set up Triple H vs. Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell.

Anyway, the most notable bit here is Vince going in on Rick Rude being the “insurance policy” again, a concept he just can’t wrap his head around, and Rude promises that if Vince doesn’t open up his wallet and pay Rude now, he’s going to “pay later.” That comes up about a month and a half later, when Vince doesn’t figure out Rude’s contract extension fast enough so Rude jumps ship to a live Nitro on the same night he appears on a taped Raw. He told you, man, maybe you should’ve listened instead of staring off into space like that.

Everybody Fights!

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Here we see a young Baron Corbin holding up a Sgt. Slaughter sign on Raw.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Everybody Fights, the recap lightning round where we lump together all instances of 1997 WWF’s favorite booking trope, “end the match by sending out a bunch of people to fight in a big pile.”

Up first we have the ending to Vader vs. The British Bulldog, with the Hart Foundation running down to attack Vader so he wins the match before he can hit the Vader Bomb and win the match. You know how it goes. They beat him down 4-on-1 with Canadian flags, which of course brings out Flag Disrespect Correspondent The Patriot to make the save. Like most patriotic saves, he completely blows it, gets beaten down 4-on-1 himself, and ends the segment having the Canadian flag draped over him like he’s a dead body. Lots of that going on tonight.

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Up next is Faarooq vs. Ahmed Johnson. As a refresher, Faarooq debuted in July of ’96 by attacking Ahmed Johnson in what was supposed to set up a match between the two for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam. Ahmed got injured in the attack and the match couldn’t happen. But eventually he comes back and fights the Nation of Domination for several months, then suddenly gives up and joins them. In his first attempt at being a heel, he injures himself again and has to leave. When he returns, the Nation immediately turns on him. When he returns to get revenge, in his first attempt at being a face again, he touches the announce table wrong, putting a nail through his hand and “destroying tendons and ligaments” to the point that he’s got no feeling in his hand. Things are going well for Ahmed Johnson.

On this episode, Ahmed faces Faarooq and uses his numb mummy hand to punch him over and over, because he is a Ring General. He ends up losing the match because he starts hitting Faarooq with the ring steps in the most dangerous way you’ve ever seen, and when the referee steps in, Ahmed shoves him down. He’s like Stone Cold Steve Austin, you see, if none of Austin’s motivations made no sense, you couldn’t understand him when he talked, and he had no idea how to wrestle.

This triggers Everybody Fights featuring the Nation of Domination, Ahmed and his dead Vampire Hunter D hand, Ken Shamrock, and the Legion of Doom. For added THREAT-LULZ, Hawk puts on Faarooq’s hat.

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We turned Rocky Maivia heel a few weeks ago, guys, can we get to the part where all the Nation segments are about him?

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Before I recap this, look at that picture. Can you tell who ANY of those people are?

This, believe it or not, is The Headbangers defending the WWF Tag Team Championship against Jose and “Hose-B” (™ Jerry Lawler) of Los Boricuas. He actually uses that joke as they’re walking to the ring, and Vince lets out a big “ha HA!” from his belly like it’s legitimately the first time he’s ever heard it. If you don’t recognize any Boricuas in that photo, it’s because this is the week they changed their aesthetic from white jeans and white tank tops and fedoras to Day One Ish.

The Godwinns do a run in to attack Los Boricuas and keep them from winning the Tag Team Championship, because they want to face the Headbangers for the belts at Badd Blood. You know you’re a great team when the other teams in the division are cheating to get a title match with YOU and not the third and fourth members of Los Boricuas.

Best: Steve Austin Is Still Going Crazy

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This is the episode where Owen Hart debuts his legendary “Owen 3:16/I just broke your neck” t-shirt, which joins the original Monday Night Jericho shirt on the list of tees of late-90s mid-carders I desperately wished there’d been a WWE Shop Dot Com around to buy on. Remember when you had to like, go to a live show to get a t-shirt? And then you had to just pick from whatever was there? Say what you want about us losing all rights and privacy and falling under the ever-gazing eye of Big Brother, but at least I can buy an Ascension t-shirt in the middle of the night and get it 2-day shipped to me if I want.

Earlier in the show, Vince confronts Stone Cold about what’s been going on, and tells him that he can either get fired or bring in a doctor’s note saying he won’t hold the World Wrestling Federation responsible if he tries to wrestle again and ends up paralyzed. Modern fans may recognize this as the Seth Rollins hold harmless agreement, which joins Big Show’s “iron clad contract” in the pantheon of HR jargon WWE turned into a pay-per-view match synopsis and beat us to death with. Austin’s response is, quite frankly, to tell Vince to blow it out his ass.

In the tradition of BISCHOFF SMELLS TURNER’S ASS, Vince ends the interview perfectly framed by a fan’s sign:

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Then Owen shows up wearing a HEY AUSTIN GO FUCK YOURSELF tee, and Vince is like, HOW COULD YOU WEAR THAT KNOWING THAT MANIAC IS IN THE BUILDING? Owen’s got a swat team with him for protection, you see, so he’s not scared. He’s confident he’ll defeat Faarooq for the Intercontinental Championship at Badd Blood and says he’ll never show compassion and let his guard down like he did with Steve Austin at SummerSlam again, but fails to do a pre-segment roll call of the swat team, because Stone Cold Steve Austin is one of them. Owen catches a stunner, Austin escapes through the crowd, and the rest of the swat team is unable to get through the impenetrable wall of “some wrestling fans” to catch him.

In response to this, Sgt. Slaughter says that Austin will be at Badd Blood to present the Intercontinental Championship to the new champion in a special post-match ceremony. Jim Ross turns into Brandon Stroud for a minute and goes MENTAL, screaming about how Sarge is asking for trouble and is a blind, ass-backwards moron for setting this up. It’s so thorough and awesome and correct that the usually tackily-verbose Jerry Lawler is like, “jeez, tell us how you really feel.”

Worst: Brian Pillman’s Final Appearance

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Brian Pillman was a 2-time Light Heavyweight Champion and a 3-time Tag Team Champion, a former Rookie Of The Year who helped popularize junior heavyweight wrestling in the United States alongside Jushin Thunder Liger and pave the way for lucha libre stars like Rey Mysterio Jr. to flourish in the U.S. He was in a five-star rated War Games match. His storyline in WCW with Kevin Sullivan changed the face of the wrestling business, for better or worse, mangling kayfabe and setting the stage for the New World Order and the Attitude Era. He pulled a gun on Stone Cold Steve Austin, helped make the Hart Foundation the most hated group in the United States, and was without a doubt one of the most controversial, influential professional wrestlers of the 1990s.

His final appearance is this fake sex tape where he makes puns about how he’s sexually assaulting a guy’s wife per a wrestling match stipulation. He dies from arteriosclerotic heart disease at age 35 about six hours before Badd Blood starts.

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[heavy sigh]

Anyway, looking back on this now, it’s weird to see how they were setting up the big swerve. They announced last week that Goldust and Marlena were planning to renew their vows (on Raw, for some reason) once her 30 days with Pillman were over. That’s a red flag. They also have Pillman tease that he’s bringing “lewd Polaroids” of Marlena at Badd Blood, with Lawler giddily yelling, “I SAW IT” about it, and demands Goldust be handcuffed to the ring post during the Pillman/Dude Love match. There’s also a weird hotline commercial during this episode where they’re like, “call to see if Goldust thinks Marlena might be enjoying her time with Brian Pillman.”

As we’ve said a few times in these columns, the idea was that Marlena and Pillman were supposed to have been in on it since the beginning, so Marlena agreeing to the match, helping Pillman win and going along with the stipulation instead of, you know, not, were part of the plan. It’s the only way any of this is redeemed or makes sense. The “vow renewal” segment was obviously when they were gonna pull the trigger, as seen by like half of the weddings WWE has done. Instead, Pillman dies. And while “it messed up a wrestling storyline” is the least important part about that IMAGINABLE, they were still left with an absolute mess as a result of it.

Goldust wrestles the Sultan on Raw with half his face painted like a skull, which would be cool if not for literally everything else, including having to watch the Sultan wrestle for five minutes.

Everybody Fights! (Reprise)

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During the Undertaker’s entrance, Bret Hart and the British Bulldog run out and attack him. While they’re doing this, Vader and The Patriot return from their Canadian graves to attack THEM. And while this is happening, Shawn Michaels and Hunter Hearst Helmsley jog over and attack the Undertaker again.

I’m honestly surprised that Kane didn’t debut here, with him and Paul Bearer running out in street clothes to just aimlessly battle royal fight everybody.

As The Halliburton Turns

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wait, what

Helmsley vs. Undertaker doesn’t last long. As Taker’s about to win with a chokeslam and the Tombstone, Rick Rude shows up and attacks him from behind with a metal briefcase. If we needed a dark harbinger that Jeff Jarrett was about to return, here it is. They should’ve had Mongo McMichael join D-Generation X, and dress Pepe the Chihuahua in little football jerseys that told people to suck his dick.

A several-on-one melee ensues, again, ending in Sweet Chin Music and Cobra Kai dojo graduate Shawn Michaels putting The Undertaker in a body bag. YEAHHHHH!

In an amazing and also kind of super funny visual, the Undertaker proves he’s hefty hefty hefty and not wimpy wimpy wimpy by doing the Undertaker sit-up IN the bag, unzipping himself and beating the shit out of everyone.

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He chases Michaels up the stage, and Shawn can’t escape because the gorilla position is now full of smoke and red lighting. Was Kane back there? Did Paul Bearer set up a spooky thing to scare the Undertaker and then call it off because someone else tried to kill him?

I don’t know the answer, but I can share this shot of the show’s great final image: Shawn Michaels climbing the TitanTron to get away from the Undertaker.

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In six days he’d try the same thing, and it’d set forth 20 years of people falling from halfway up a box cage.

Next Week:

The first-ever Hell in a Cell match happens, the Devil’s Favorite Middle-Management Demon Mayor debuts, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels go into shoot overdrive because we’re almost to Survivor Series, and more.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: We discussed Badd Blood, the pay-per-view featuring the first Hell in a Cell match, the debut of Kane, and (before the show) the real-life death of Brian Pillman.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here. We’re on the same week again, finally!

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re almost to Survivor Series ’97, where … something happens.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for October 13, 1997.

Best: What A Bunch Of DEGENERATES!

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That’s a “Best” for everyone except Bret Hart, who in retrospect really should’ve seen the writing on the wall.

This week’s episode begins with Bret and the Hart Foundation (minus the British Bulldog, who’s celebrating a birthday and an anniversary) cutting a promo in the ring. I mean, it’s supposed to be Bret cutting a promo, but before he can speak we get the legendary intrusion from Shawn Michaels and Triple H that gives D-Generation X its name. If you’ve never seen it, here you go:

Bret’s only contribution to the promo is to say, “you two degenerates” to cue Michaels naming the group. Bret doesn’t even get a rebuttal other than challenging a guy who beat him last week to a fight seconds after watching the guy beat him last week on the TitanTron, as before he can say anything afterward, the Nation of Domination interrupts him. Bret’s getting his leg kicked out of his leg at every turn and doesn’t seem to notice. I uh, hope that doesn’t end badly for him.

You can always tell when WWE’s come up with a new branding they want to get over, because they CANNOT STOP SAYING IT. At least 10 times in this episode, someone will see Michaels or Helmsley doing something, anything, and be like, “look at these degenerates … or D-Generation X as they call themselves!”

Both Michaels and Helmsley get plenty to do in the episode, as they manage to cause but avoid multiple team brawls and individually win matches by forfeit because their opponent got beaten up. The first and best of these is Shawn Michaels vs. Flash Funk, which probably would’ve ruled, but ends before it starts with Funk getting funked up by Kane. In a moment of weirdly adorable heeling, Michaels shows up to steal the pin anyway, with H as the referee (checking the shoulder too many times), Rude as the ring announcer and Chyna as the timekeeper.

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Look at those degenerates! Or D-Generation X, as they call themselves!

Later in the episode, Triple H is supposed to face The Patriot. Gotta say, it’s more jarring than usual to hear Kurt Angle’s music playing for The Patriot when he’s about to face Triple H. That match doesn’t happen, however, because the halliburton turns, and “R.R.” Rude (which they call him for some reason) shows up with hot coffee and a violent briefcase.

Please enjoy this GIF that illustrates how Starbucks affects our national economy:

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Great job, America.

This leads to … well, this is as good a place as any to talk about-

Everybody Fights

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During the open, Michaels and Helmsley stick around at the announce table to do commentary for Owen Hart vs. Kama Mustafa. If you remember those bits with D-X eating bananas (because they remind you of penises!), this is where that starts. The match, of course, ends with Michaels crotch-chopping at everyone until they start fighting each other, and — get this — Bret Hart gets humiliated and beaten up by four guys while Shawn Michaels lies on the ground laughing at him.

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Later, after the Patriot gets defeated by the Hot Coffee Mod, Sgt. Slaughter shows up and is upset that neither member of D-X has had to compete. He lectures them on respect for … several minutes, until announcing Triple H’s replacement opponent: Ahmed Johnson.

As you know if you’ve been reading these columns, there’s a running joke based on actual life about how every time Johnson’s about to get a push, he does something stupid and injures himself or gets attacked and disappears. You won’t be disappointed to find out that before Ahmed can EVEN GET INTO THE RING as H’s replacement opponent, the Nation of Domination attacks him. D-Generation X goes up to the stage and eats popcorn while they watch the Nation re-injure Ahmed’s hand.

If that’s not everybody fights enough, the Legion of Doom and Ken Shamrock show up to fight off the Nation. Nothing happens to D-Generation X, because Bret Hart (and Ahmed Johnson, I guess) are the only people spending the next month getting screwed. Next week, D-X gets their first ridiculously extended entrance speech. In Canada. AW, HERE IT GOES.

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The other, historically non-essential Everybody Fights is between the Truth Commission and the Disciples of Apocalypse, who I guess are killing each other trying to be the “racist white team” in the World Wrestling Federation gang warz. Who will win, biker justice or apartheid? Stay tuned!

This is also the Raw debut of the new leader of the Truth Commission, The Jackal, an actual pro wrestling commentator and announcer replacing the Dario Cueto-ish “actor portraying a wrestling character” The Commandant. You may know him best as Don Callis, current New Japan Pro Wrestling World English color commentator, or as “Cyrus the Virus” from ECW. He’s a downgrade from the Commandant as a themed wrestling character, but a huge, huge improvement in regard to “actually doing things on a wrestling show.”

Worst: Creative Admits They’re Lazy And Have No Idea What To Do With These Minis

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First and most notably, the “Freddie Blassie tries to kill Sable in laser tag” commercial epic ends this week with Sable officially “foiling” Blassie and revealing the point of her mission: saving an extremely off-brand Mascarita Sagrada. The mini (via subtitles) says the script writers couldn’t come up with a funny ending, so they cut his role short. GET IT. DO YOU GET THE JOKE.

If it helps at all, the script writers couldn’t come up with a funny anything else, either. Also, holy shit, there were SCRIPT WRITERS for these commercials?

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yeah no shit

In actual wrestling news, Nova and Max Mini take on Tarantula and Mosaic in a mini division tag team match highlighted by Nova going headfirst into the metal stage on a dive and nearly killing himself. Imagine a very small, colorful version of the Undertaker’s WrestleMania 25 dive.

Max Mini wins with a roll-up and Nova turns out to be fine, which is good news. If they replaced Brian Pillman’s match with a minis tag because he died, what would they replace a minis tag with if one of them died? The Headbangers playing with action figures?

Speaking Of Brian Pillman’s Death … (Oh No)

This week’s Jim Cornette “shoot” is on Phil Mushnick, a writer for the New York Post and TV Guide who hates wrestling and wants to get it canceled. The rub here is that Mushnick used the death of Brian Pillman as a reason to bring up the early deaths of so many wrestlers, which is opportunistic and callous but also absolutely a thing.

And while yeah, Mushnick is still at it to this day and probably the worst paid writer with the worst set of opinions and perspectives in the entire world, it’s pretty hard to get mad at the dude for being opportunistic about Pillman’s death when the Raw before this one featured an extreme close-up of the man’s widow crying while Vince McMahon asked her felt about him being dead. Just saying.

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In other Pillman-related news, Goldust and Marlena are back together, and during his entrance for a match against Savio Vega the announce team goes from “Goldust and Marlena were supposed to renew their vows last week but didn’t out of respect to Brian Pillman’s family” to “Hulk Hogan’s got a new movie coming out and he’s a stupid bald lair” in the same breath.

The Hogan stuff is in response to Eric Bischoff opening Nitro trying to get fans to sneak Assault on Devil’s Island promotional posters into Raw, so they joke about Goldust being a “movie buff” and wondering if he’s seen No Holds Barred. McMahon laughs about how Hogan promised to pay back his salary if the movie was a failure, but he guesses the “check is still in the mail.” That quickly goes into a wanking-motion conversation about the wig he wears in the new movie, which is admittedly completely hilarious.

Worst: The Light Heavyweight Division Isn’t Getting Any Better

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So the original idea behind the relaunched light heavyweight division was to bring in Michinoku Pro guys like Great Sasuke and Taka Michinoku to give the division a fast-paced, distinct feel from WCW’s lucha libre-heavy cruiserweight division. When Great Sasuke didn’t work out and got fired, the new idea became bringing in guys like Brian Christopher and Scott Putski to do punch-and-kick stuff indistinguishable from the rest of the show, except that nobody would like or enjoy it.

That didn’t work either, so now they’re doing a weird mash-up where Yoshihiro Tajiri is trying to do moonsaults and kicks and Brian Christopher’s doing bad dropkicks and pinning him with a handful of tights. They’ve sincerely never, ever known why people might want to see smaller wrestlers, or what they might like to see them do.

Worst: Oh No, Can The Legion Of Doom Save Their Careers?

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Let’s take this from the top.

Stone Cold Steve Austin and Dude Love were the Tag Team Champions. Owen Hart injured Austin at SummerSlam. Austin and Dude were supposed to compete in a fatal four-way at Ground Zero, but Austin’s injury proved too severe and he had to forfeit the tag titles. The WWF held a tournament to crown new champs, which was won by the British Bulldog and Owen Hart. In that tournament, Owen and the Bulldog beat the Headbangers. With Austin and Dude out of the fatal four-way, the Headbangers randomly took their place and won the Tag Team Championship by pinning Owen Hart, with Austin’s help. The Headbangers lost every match after that, culminating in them losing the Tag Team Championship to the Godwinns at Badd Blood. The next night on Raw, the Headbangers beat the Godwinns in a non-title match for some reason.

This week, the Godwinns are supposed to defend those titles against their rivals, the Legion of Doom. Before the show even starts, a video package announces that the Legion of Doom have promised to retire from pro wrestling completely if they don’t win the tag titles tonight. That’s followed by nearly two hours of retrospective vignettes exploring the history of the team. They could not have possibly telegraphed this harder.

The Legion of Doom wins, of course, in a match that is completely terrible, of course, and become the new Tag Team Champions. The Godwinns manage to be a worse team than the Headbangers by losing their only non-title match AND their only title defense as champions for an 8 day reign. To make things even worse, the match ends because Uncle Cletus accidentally hits Henry with a horseshoe, so the post-match is Henry and Phineas beating the shit out of their own uncle and WWF writing him off the show. Good times!

Best: Two Important Bits Of History

While this isn’t the best episode, there are actually two important bits of history that happen in addition to D-Generation X getting their name. I figured I’d end the column with those, for a little positivity.

The first happens at the end of the Stone Cold Steve Austin segment. Once again, Vince McMahon has promised Stone Cold Steve Austin he can wrestle at Survivor Series as long as he signs a hold harmless agreement taking full responsibility for his health and safety and waiving his right to hold the WWF or anyone in it accountable if he gets paralyzed. Austin is obviously like, YES WHATEVER HERE.

Faarooq and the Nation of Domination interrupt, still upset about Austin braining Faarooq and costing him the Intercontinental Championship at Badd Blood. Austin challenges anyone from the group to come to the ring and try to kick his ass, and guess which member accepts?

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Yep, The Rock hits the ring and takes the first of many, man Stone Cold Stunners in his career. Austin escapes through the crowd, and Rocky lies there like, “that was cool, but next time I’m gonna see if I can backflip into the ropes.”

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The other important event actually happened on Shotgun Saturday Night, which is still a show, and is shown in recap form on Raw. “The Real Double J” Jesse Jammes returns with a new name — the “Road Dogg” — and gets in Rockabilly’s face about how his career is failing with the Honky Tonk Man. He suggests they should be a team. Honky tries to attack him with a guitar, but SWERVE, Rockabilly steals the guitar and bashes HONKY. Billy and the Road Dogg high five, and what probably played as the least important moment of the week when it originally aired ends up being one of the pivotal moments of the era: the birth of the New Age Outlaws.

On next week’s show, Road Dogg and Rockabilly — once again Billy Gunn, and advertised for the first time as a “bad ass” — get their first match together as a team. Also, their first entrance, and their first suggestion for what you should do and who you should call if you didn’t know. Welcome to the new age.

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Bret Hart’s final match on Raw for 13 years happened and ended with Shawn Michaels superkicking him in the face. Fitting. Also, Shawn showed his butthole and Jeff Jarrett was a butthole.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. This is the go-home show for Survivor Series ’97, so things get really, really different after this one.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for November 3, 1997.

Best: Ahmed Johnson Helps Invent A Catchphrase

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This week’s show opens with Ahmed Johnson, a wrestler who is always injured, challenging Stone Cold Steve Austin, a wrestler who is currently injured and not medically allowed to compete, to a match. Austin hit Ahmed with a Stone Cold Stunner on the previous week’s show to make sure Owen Hart remained Intercontinental Champion heading into Survivor Series, so Ahmed’s nothing but knee pads and rage spittle.

The segment is notable for two reasons; it’s the final Raw appearance of Vince McMahon before Survivor Series happens and he becomes “Mr. McMahon,” and it’s the first Raw appearance of Stone Cold surveying a crowd with, “if you want me to do a thing, gimme a hell yeah.” Here, it’s whip Ahmed Johnson’s ass. Thank you for your one (1) incidental contribution to pro wrestling, Ahmed!

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The match never happens, of course, because Austin is legitimately injured and can’t/shouldn’t get in the ring six days before his big return match at Survivor Series, and also more directly because Kane shows up and Tombstones Ahmed a bunch. Ahmed’s gear in Kane’s light is like when people wear green and stand in front of a green screen.

Mankind shows up to make the save, furthering the build for the Kane vs. Mankind match at Survivor Series, and reminding Ahmed Johnson what it sounds like when someone is popular at wrestling.

Worst: The World’s Worst Light Heavyweight Tournament

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HARD CAM! HARD CAM!

The World Wrestling Federation wants to crown their first Light Heavyweight Champion but their division is “Taka Michinoku and Brian Christopher.” You’d think they’d just have those two fight it out, but they’ve brought in “stars” from “all around the world” to fill out an 8-man tournament bracket, including Canada’s Eric Shelley — a guy who jobbed once for them back in July — and 240-ish pound Flash Flanagan. Don’t get too excited about Jerry Lynn’s name being on that graphic, he gets replaced in the first round by Scott Taylor.

This week’s match features two future WWE stars: Aguila, who has a slightly stronger run a few years later as Essa Rios that brings Lita into the company, and Super Loco, who you probably know better as ECW’s Super Crazy. If you’ve never seen him before, imagine that Dustin from Stranger Things was a grown man and also a luchador. Your memories of Crazy are probably pretty favorable, because none of them are from this match.

Holy shit, you guys, you won’t see non-contracted talent choke this bad on a Monday Night wrestling show again until Christopher Daniels gets a match on Nitro in 2001 and almost breaks his neck. Super Loco is MUY MALO here, completely whiffing a springboard spinning heel kick and trying to Misawa over the ropes and messing it up so badly the entire arena laughs at him. When he actually connects with a move, Jim Cornette (who is on commentary for hour one for some reason) congratulates him on finally being a wrestler. Crazy’s next match on Raw isn’t until 2006.

Worst: Sunny’s Outfit

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Sunny is (of course) the special guest ring announce for the Light Heavyweight Tournament, and it’s not often that I give Sunny Worsts for how she looks, but what’s she dressed as? The Brady Bunch’s lawn?

Sable’s Week Isn’t Much Better

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If you asked me what’s the worst combination of things to make up a Raw Is War segment in 1997, it’s probably “Marc Mero vs. Savio Vega” followed by “more of the Marc Mero hates people realizing he’s married to a beautiful woman angle without any actual advancement,” with a side dish of, “post-match interview with Michael Cole.” All it needs is a run-in from the Disciples of Apocalypse to make it perfectly unwatchable.

Best: Goldust Gets Weird

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So, a quick recap in case you haven’t been reading the column.

A little over a month before this, Brian Pillman tried to goad Goldust into a match for the “services” of his valet — and, more importantly, his wife — Marlena for 30 days. Goldust refused, but Pillman kept antagonizing them until Marlena agreed to the match FOR Goldust. Goldust lost, and Pillman got to, as it appeared, sexually assault Goldust’s wife for a month, video tape him raping her and mail it in to Raw, and choose how she acted and dressed. It was horrifying and didn’t make a lot of sense, until you realize what the hook was going to be … Pillman and Marlena had dated before she met Goldust, so the idea was that Marlena would’ve been in on it the entire time, Pillman wasn’t actually doing anything to her against her will, and they were gonna swerve Dustin and turn on him when the 30 days were up and they were, for whatever reason, renewing their vows on Raw. The problem is that a day before this was supposed to be revealed, Brian Pillman died. So they were left holding the bag, and the bag had a brick in it.

It’s almost been an entire cycle since Pillman’s passing, so WWF can finally move forward with an audible: this sit-down interview in which Dustin Rhodes tells Marlena that their time apart made him realize he didn’t love her, and that he needed something else to satisfy his weird-ass Goldust needs. Marlena gets her heart broken in a flip-flop of the angle, Goldust looks like a SUPREME piece of shit for dumping his wife because he lost a match that got her sexually assaulted for a month, and — spoiler alert — he becomes a kinky sex monster under the even weirder hand of Luna Vachon.

I look forward to spending several months awkwardly trying to explain what the hell The Artist Formerly Known As Goldust is going for.

Worst: The Hart Family Isn’t On This Episode, But The Hart Foundation B-Team Is!

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Vader takes on the British Bulldog in a “dog collar match,” which is one of those wrestling match types WWE super doesn’t understand, so they just put wrestlers in dog collars that connect, have them wrestle a normal match and then end it on a DQ. This is a picture of Vader being “hung” by the chain, even though it’s connected to a loose collar that’s almost slipping over his head while he stands there trying to act choked. That’s not how choking works!

The most notable thing about the match is that the “Hart Foundation” is there, with sudden new members Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon, but Intercontinental Champion Owen Hart and Survivor Series main-eventing WWF Champion Bret Hart aren’t. Hm. Does it look like maybe the World Wrestling Federation’s trying to set up a new Hart Foundation in case the totally cool thing they’re planning for Survivor Series goes bad and they lose BOTH Harts?

Best: ENTER STEVE BLACKMAN

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Vader spends the post-match getting beaten down four-on-one until he’s saved by a “fan” jumping in the ring and MURDERING EVERYONE WITH KARATE. Yes, this is exactly what WCW did with Ernest Miller, but we’ll give it a pass because it marks the WWF debut of the First Derrick Bateman Steve Blackman, the “Lethal Weapon.” He’s not the best wrestler in the world, but he’s maybe the BEST WRESTLER IN THE WORLD. Imagine Adult Swim made a cartoon about a police officer who was also a ninja. That’s Steve Blackman, 1000%.

Fun note about Blackman that not a lot of people seem to know: he was actually originally considered for a WWF contract way the hell back in 1989, but didn’t get it because he wrestled in South Africa and caught malaria and dysentery. That kept him sick and in bed for TWO YEARS, and he spend four years after THAT in physical therapy. How insane is that? The deadly-ass Steve Blackman we knew was the one who’d been on the shelf for a decade thanks to like six years of almost dying.

Best: Billy Gunn Gets His Best Nickname

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The New Age Outlaws don’t do much this week besides beat Los Boricuas in a match you don’t want to watch and wear the New Blackjacks’ destroyed cowboy hats, but their appearance is notable for one reason: Road Dogg sarcastically referring to “Bad Ass” Billy Gunn as “Mr. Ass” for the first time. If not for that quip, we would’ve never gotten the greatest WWE entrance theme of all time. The best surprises always sneak up from behind.

Best: Bret Hart Isn’t On This Episode, But D-Generation X Sure Is!

They have three notable moments this week.

1. Shawn Michaels no-selling a “Shawn is gay” chant by kissing Triple H, then kissing Chyna, then acting all confused about it

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That gets a thunderous “faggot” chance in response, because 1997, but it’s the best possible way to handle chants about how you’re gay. He could only go the “ask your mom/sister how gay I am” route so many times. I also like that he didn’t even CONSIDER kissing Rick Rude. You might think that’s because Rude would’ve kicked his ass, but I think it’s because he knew that if he kissed Rick Rude, he’d faint.

2. Selling Sgt. Slaughter’s spittle with helmets, then selling it harder by attaching windshield wipers to the fronts of the helmets

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This is arguably the first time D-Generation X didn’t something crowd pleasing, which unfortunately set the tone for post-Shawn Michaels babyface D-X, and even MORE unfortunately convinced the 40-year old versions of Shawn and Triple H that D-X was all about wearing army clothes while they said poo-poo and pee-pee. Still, it’s pretty funny, and made it into every D-X related video or highlight reel ever.

3. Pedigreeing Ken Shamrock onto a Halliburton to prove that Shawn’s dick is “the world’s most dangerous man”

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Their joke, not mine.

Shamrock makes Michaels tap out to an ankle lock behind the referee’s back, setting up Shamrock as the first contender for new WWF Champion Shawn Michaels after Survivor Series. But he doesn’t win here, thanks to the omnipresent D-Generation X interference.

I’m trying to think back to what fans watching this live at the time thought. We knew Bret was leaving — thanks, late-90s Internet! — but I’m not sure anyone really understood what a boot to the ass they were giving him on the way out. Still, it’s crazy to go back and watch this last month of pre-Montreal Screwjob WWF television and wonder how things would’ve turned out if all parties had played it differently.

Next Week:

Survivor Series ’97.

Have you listened to this week’s McMahonsplaining podcast?

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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: The shit finally hit the fan.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. This is the leave-home show for Survivor Series ’97.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for November 10, 1997.

Best, Then Worst: The Very First Thing WWF Does After The Montreal Screwjob Is Give D-X Their Entrance Theme

Yep.

I think anyone looking for an honest recap of how the major players of the Montreal Screwjob acted and reacted should look at the Raw immediately following Survivor Series ’97, which is dedicated to making sure we knew D-Generation X listened to no one and was better than everyone, and is built around Shawn Michaels at the absolute HEIGHT of his political power and arrogance. It’s like somebody put the worst WCW version of Kevin Nash into AJ Styles’ body. I’m not saying the guy never felt bad about his role in things, but there’s visibly a gap between the event and those feelings.

Raw opens with the debut of the D-Generation X theme by Chris Warren and the DX Band, or as you know if it you ever tried to download it from Napster, “DX THEME BY RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.” It’s kinda fun to go back to the one time in WWE history when that music started and absolutely zero people reacted. They actually do it twice, too, with Rick Rude getting the full intro, then coming to the ring and intro’ing Shawn and Hunter, who get a shortened version. So really, nobody on either show really knows what to do yet, so it feels like everybody’s winging it until public opinion settles. Both sides are afraid to make the next real move.

Note: Vince McMahon does not appear on this episode.

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Ken Shamrock interrupts them to become Shawn’s first championship challenger and cuts maybe the worst promo of the year. Shawn is condescendingly like, “I am going to give you the microphone, try to string some words together to form what we call sentences,” and then dude takes the mic and absolutely cannot. In fact, the only thing he can do to get a reaction from the crowd is to question Chyna’s sex, so he keeps going back to it. Plus, D-X no-sells everything anyway, so the promo’s basically:

Shamrock: Shawn, I’m gonna punch you!
Shawn: [makes a face]
Crowd: [nothing]
Shamrock: Triple H I’m gonna punch YOU!
HHH: [makes a face]
Crowd: [nothing]
Shamrock: ARE YOU A MAN OR A WOMAN OR WHATEVER YOU ARE
Crowd: looooooooool
Shamrock: anyway back to what I was saying about Hunter-
Crowd: no
Shamrock: back to what I was saying about Shawn?
Crowd: no
Shamrock: Rick Rude?
Crowd: eh
Shamrock: CHYNA I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE GOT A PENIS OR A VAGINA
Crowd: YEAH GET HER

My favorite part is when he runs out of material and tries to tell her to “get in the kitchen,” but he forgets half the words so it comes out as, and I swear I’m not paraphrasing this as a joke, “AND GO HAVE A SEAT WHERE YOU BELONG, SURE AS HELL AIN’T NO KITCHEN OR, NO WOMAN OR MAN OR WHATEVER THE HELL YOU ARE!” To his credit, Triple H’s retroactively babyface response to Shamrock is to do some crotch chops on Chyna and give him the most legitimate middle finger I’ve ever seen on WWE TV.

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This, of course, brings out “Sgt. Slobber” ( Shawn Michaels) to make Triple H vs. Ken Shamrock for the main event. If you’ve watched a single television main event on either popular prime-time wrestling show in 1997, you know the ending: Shamrock has the match won, but D-X runs in to cause a disqualification and beat him down. This is to set up the main event of In Your House: D-Generation X — Shamrock vs. Shawn for the WWF Championship — which ends [drum-roll please] with D-X running in to cause a disqualification and beating Shamrock down. Derp. The post-match for that ends up being even worse, but we’ll get there.

Worst: Speaking Of ‘Even Worse,’ Here’s Ahmed Johnson Trying To Take A TKO

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This is easily one of the worst wrestled and most botch-filled Raws I think I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if they were stressed out about what happened at Survivor Series or worried they were gonna lose their jobs and go out of business or what, but everyone who isn’t Austin, Rock or D-X is out here spectacularly shitting the bed.

The worst feud of the night goes to Marc Mero, who uses his “real boxer” persona to (1) lose to Ahmed Johnson via nut-shot disqualification and (2) start a fight with THIS man:

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Somewhere in the back, Bart Gunn just felt a cold chill run down his spine, but he doesn’t know why. And then his head started wobbling back and forth.

No, this isn’t Michael Chiklis in a Cosby sweater, it’s super heavyweight hobo fights legend Butterbean. The Bean parlayed a career in murdering random losers in toughman competitions into a successful career as a boxer — he’s the IBA World Super Heavyweight Champion here with a 30-1 record — a respectable career in MMA, and a less all of that career as a kickboxer. He was also the boss at the end of WWF’s Brawl For All, which ends up being maybe the funniest moment in WWE history.

Mero decides to start a fight with him for no reason because he’s a “real boxer” and Butterbean isn’t, despite one of them being a current boxing champion and the other being a former boxer barely passing as a professional wrestler. When that argument doesn’t hold up, Mero starts accusing Butterbean of “looking at Sable,” and threatens him if he ever looks at her again. Butterbean’s response is WONDERFULLY confused, as it should be, and made even better by the fact that his voice is basically Mickey Mouse. He’s here trying to watch Raw and have a good time and, “SOME IDIOT COMES OUT N’HOLLERS!” Michael Cole is nervously like, “I don’t THINK you were looking at Sable,” and Butterbean says, “SHE’S ATTRACTIVE LADY WHO WOULDN’T? Y’KNOW I BEEN MARRIED BUT Y’KNOW NOT LIKE I’M WANTIN’ TO GO OUT WITH’R OR NOTHIN’ NO!”

The payoff would come at In Your House in a match so bad it makes Roddy Piper vs. Mr. T at WrestleMania 2 look like Show vs. Mayweather at WrestleMania 24. Why do we keep asking boxers to wrestle, and for wrestlers to get their asses kicked by them in wrestling matches?

Anyway, the best part of the segment is the guy who didn’t know what to write on his sign for Raw, so he just drew Archie Andrews.

Best: ♫ Here They Come To Save The Day ♫

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Their best work is yet to come, but the saving grace of this Raw (and arguably the only thing worth watching on the entire episode) is the first real confrontation between Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. These guys are about to launch into an Intercontinental Championship program that makes them both look like huge, charismatic, next-level stars. Austin was already there, of course, but Rocky stepped right up next to him. And man, can you imagine how hard this company would’ve tanked if they’d done that to Bret Hart and sent him skipping off to Nitro without these two guys waiting in the wings to pick up the slack? It was like a hard refresh that cleared up all the company’s memory.

We’ll get into it more over the next … several years of shows, but the key to any good Rock/Austin interaction is Austin doing something barely threatening, like 0.1 on the crazy Steve Austin scale, and The Rock selling it like he just found out he’s a ghost that’s been dead the whole time. Like, look at the guy’s face when Austin tells him he sucks:

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That’s the “doing a full backwards roll and popping up so your legs get caught on the top rope” Stunner sell of facial expressions. I’m so excited to watch these shows again and praise these guys, because we desperately need somebody on the Internet to say that The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin were good.

The Everything Else On This Episode Is Terrible Lightning Round

I don’t want to deprive you of comedic material or whatever, but this is seriously a “rebuilding” episode while they tried to figure out what to do with the remaining, confused-ass Hart Foundation members and a black-eyed Vince McMahon, so I’m gonna touch on all the other stuff that happened, keeping in mind that literally none of it mattered.

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Let’s jump right in to The Artist About To Be Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Goldust, who broke up with his wife on Raw last week and decided to deal with his divorce by [checks notes] this says “wearing blackface,” is that right? That’s … oh. In a weird turn of events, they decide the first real introduction to this character should be Vader showing up, getting mad at him for bailing on his Survivor Series team and powerbombing him while Goldie makes a bunch of nervous excuses.

None of the Artist stuff that happens is really “good,” but Dustin’s got an unwavering commitment to making the entire pro wrestling world as sexually uncomfortable as possible, so if blackface cross-dressing with the world’s most Freudian cigar in his mouth makes you feel uncomfortable, strap the hell in.

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Here is a rare screenshot of Bradshaw being MAD about someone getting assaulted in the bathroom.

It turns out the Road Dogg and Bill “Ass” Gunn Esquire were responsible for it, setting up a handicap hardcore match for later in the show. Much like the Goldust/Vader segment, the booking is INSANE here, with Bradshaw single-handedly destroying both dudes by himself until Billy’s able to hit one (1) offensive move and pin him. They even have to double-pin him to keep him down, because if there’s one guy you think of when you say “overpowered character on a 1997 Raw,” it’s Blackjack Bradshaw.

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Steve Blackman vs. Los Boricuas is one of those chicken-or-the-egg WWE booking scenarios where the fight only happens because Master Hand put them in place and made them fight. Los Boricuas are supposed to have a match to highlight their newest member, Ali G, but as they’re standing in the ring, the announce team decides to interview Steve Blackman at ringside?

Blackman gives an interview about how he’s “not familiar with the rules of WWF” but believes he “acquitted himself” last night at Survivor Series. The Boricuas are rightfully like, “hey, maybe do your interview some other time,” and a fight breaks out. Blackman manages to fight them off 1-on-3, and whoever was supposed to wrestle the Boricuas just stays in the back.

Let’s say it was Sexton Hardcastle and “The Canadian Rage” Christian Cage.

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In this week’s Everybody Fights, The Headbangers vs. The Truth Commission gets loosey goosey and turns into a free-for-all pitting the Bangers against the full Truth Commission against the full Disciples of Apocalypse against trainers, EMTS, referees down. I guess everyone’s still buzzing after the previous night’s show, which you’ll recall was operated under GANG RULZ.

Statistical note: The Guinness Book of World Records lists this tag team match as the most boring four minutes in television history.

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Remember that thing I wrote about how everyone on the show is a little off, and nobody can seem to do a wrestling move without messing it up? Even Taka Michinoku can’t seem to put it together, seen here hitting a big top rope spinning heel kick to Devon Storm’s feet.

This is a round one match in the Light Heavyweight Championship tournament, which already has Scott Taylor slotted in where Jerry Lynn was announced last week. Taka managed to survive a Brian Christopher run-in to win the match and advance, and I continue to wonder why they didn’t just do Taka vs. Christopher for the belt instead of having them spend a month beating up dudes who aren’t actually in the WWF.

Finally This Week, A Declaration

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Kane accidentally turns face by saving us from an Undertaker vs. Kama Mustafa match — Undertaker loves fighting that dude — and we get our first real Kane and Undertaker interaction. Kane wants a match, but Taker won’t give it to him, because he is “flesh and blood, my flesh and blood.”

Looking back, I love that the first match in the feud happened because (spoiler alert) Kane set fire to their parents’ graves, dug up their dead bodies and CHOKESLAMMED THE UNDERTAKER INTO THEIR BONES. I feel like Kane could’ve just like, attacked Undertaker from behind a couple of times and accomplished the same thing. I miss the ’90s WWF that felt like funeral desecration was the only way to build serious feuds. I wish they did that now. I want Baron Corbin to show up on Smackdown like, “hey Dolph Ziggler, you took my United States Championship, but I MURDERED YOUR SISTER AND HERE’S HER CORPSE.” Just out of nowhere.

Next Week

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Mr. McMahon is born, the Rock and Sock connect, and Commissioner Slaughter gets TP’d. Most of these things are important!

(Have you checked out the McMahonsplaining podcast? Subscribe on iTunes or Google)

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this is that episode

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: D-Generation X finally got their TitanTron video and entrance theme, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock started beefing, and in the most important development of the week, Ahmed Johnson “took” a TKO.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re on the road to In Your House: D-Generation X! Everybody remembers that one!

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for November 17, 1997.

Best: Slide Into Her DMs Like

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Last week’s episode was nigh-unwatchable aside from Stone Cold Steve Austin V The Rock: Dawn Of Justice, so Raw makes the smart move of opening this week’s show with them. It’s the Orson Welles “peak too early” booking style. You never get another Citizen Kane, really, but hey, at least you got the one.

Austin shows up to tell The Rock he sucks again and challenges him to come to the ring and fight. He gets the entire Nation minus The Rock, and doesn’t think it’s weird that the only one who actually gets in the ring is D’Lo Brown. While Austin’s busy hilariously mudhole-stomping D’Lo, Rock sprints through the ring, powerslides through it like he’s Tony Jaa doing the splits under a moving truck, and scoops the Intercontinental Championship.

Later in the night, a self-crowned IC Champ takes on Dude Love, and Austin interrupts by barrelling to the ring and handing out Stone Cold Stunners to anyone that moves. Instead of walking into one himself and backflipping into the sun like Team Rocket blasting off, Rock tucks the belt under his arm like a football and bails. For the first time in a while, Austin can’t solve a problem by kicking the problem’s ass.

Here’s what was so great about the first version of this rivalry: we’d seen Austin face the self-righteous icons like Bret Hart, go up against bloodthirsty guys who want to end his career to prove a point like Owen, and even go toe-to-toe with deranged attempted murderers like Brian Pillman, but we’d never seen him go up against someone smarter than him. So the joy here is in seeing Austin get played like a fiddle by the Nation — who has spent the last year manipulating Ahmed Johnson into oblivion, so they know how to handle southern wildcard babyfaces better than anyone — and seeing Austin forced to adapt by a peer, not just an established part of a machine he can rage against.

*chef kiss*

Worst: Come On, Rude Boy

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If you read this week’s corresponding Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro, you know that D-Generation X founding member Rick Rude reacted to the Montreal Screwjob by appearing on the next night’s live Raw, sticking around to tape this week’s taped Raw, and jumping ship to a live Nitro the next week, putting himself on both Monday night wrestling shows at the same time.

With this week’s Survivor Series content centered on Vince McMahon, D-X is stuck in this weird, empty feud with authority nobody really asked for to set up a Triple H vs. Sgt. Slaughter match a few weeks from now. I mean, I get what they’re going for. Shawn Michaels has all the heat in the world on him, so if they want to keep D-X as the WWF nWo, they’ve gotta get the less abrasive one on some tweener shit. Four people beating up one old man and stripping off his clothes would be a massively heel act if (1) it wasn’t 1997, (2) wrestling morality wasn’t decided by coolness and popularity, and if (3) the World Wrestling Federation wasn’t already in the middle of training its audience that the people in charge are awful and need to get their asses kicked.

SO! Speaking of that …

Best: Whom Screwed Whom

Here’s Vince McMahon explaining why it is actually BRET HART who is the ball-licker.

What worked so well about this interview segment at the time is that Vince had never really been a “character,” so to speak, so we were conditioned to believe that what he was saying was “real,” or at least his actual perspective and opinion. As that, this interview is INFURIATING. Especially if you loved Bret Hart, or WCW, or anything other than a homogenized corporate byline.

In retrospect, it’s the birth of Mr. McMahon, the character. This is absolutely an in-character interview, whether you believe the Screwjob was a “work” or whatever or not, and every infuriating thing about it is a purposeful decision. Mr. McMahon is built on this foundation of being a delusional, self-centered, self-aggrandizing scumbag, and for the first time in WWE history, doing “what’s best for business” trumped doing what’s kind, or what’s encouraging, or what’s supportive, or what’s compassionate. It’s the basis for every single story like this that came after it, including the ones we’re currently living through. If you read this column three years from now, chances are they’re still doing a GM Hates The Talent story.

Man, Vince’s little black eye while he sits under a gigantic promo photo of Bret Hart and passive-aggressively wishes him well is the “Brock Lesnar shoves a one-legged kid with a broken leg down a flight of stairs” of heel promos.

Worst: And Now, Our Second Black Eye Angle Of The Week

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Marc Mero shows up for an absolute barn-burner against … Jerry Lawler? Really?

Yeah, so Sable walks Mero to the ring in a pair of dark sunglasses, and even though she wears sunglasses literally every time we see her, the announce team explains she’s wearing them this week because she’s been KICKED IN THE FACE BY “HER HORSE.” You know where this is going.

When Sable reveals her eye, everyone including the announce team starts doing that, “well, they said she got kicked by a horse, but I dunno,” and even the slowest fan in the audience puts two and two together. Between this and the Chaz beats Marianna story a couple of years later, WWF creative had a weird fixation on valets getting punched in the eye. Butterbean is in the crowd again this week, and he does some very stern head shaking to continue the Butterbeef and give us our sign of the week:

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Yeah, screw you, Mearal!

That’s Everything Important This Week, As They’re Still Not Sure What To Do Between Now And The Royal Rumble

hey that sounds familiar

Anyway, here’s everything else that happened on this week’s show.

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Sunny is the special guest referee for a minis trios match, so I took this screenshot that looks like she’s giving birth to them.

The match itself is Max Mini, Mini Taurus and Mini Nova and El Torito, Tarantula and Batallion. Batallion always made me laugh, because he looks like a G.I. Joe version of Super Calo. But yeah, they do some Fun Ref Goofs with Sunny for a few minutes until the lights go out, and That’s Gotta Be Kane shows up. Yes, my first thought was, “did I forgot Kane versus six minis, because I feel like I would’ve remembered that.”

As it turns out, the minis just hide until they’re saved by, oh, let’s say, the Headbangers.

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Kane ends up no-selling a JVC Kaboom Box to the dome and beats up Mosh and Thrasher by himself, and that’s the segment. I want to know what the booking conversation was for this, and what kind of weed Vince Russo was smoking where he was like, “there’s gonna be six midgets, and they’re gonna get fresh with the girl ref, and then KANE’S gonna show up and try to set them on fire, and then the HEADBANGERS are gonna come out and hit him in the face with a big boombox, which is something metal heads carry around I think, but then Kane’s gonna win anyway, and the minis and Sunny are just gonna disappear, and then we’re gonna GO TO COMMERCIAL, and then PYRO AND BALLYHOO-”

I think it was a strand called, “Nobody Tells Me When My Ideas Are Bad.”

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The New Age Outlaws are supposed to wrestle Los Boricuas, but instead just go into their locker room and steal their clothes. Savio and Miguel are so enraged that they run up the ramp and attack them, and pretty soon the rest of the Boricuas show up and the match gets thrown out. Between this and last week’s non-fight with Steve Blackman, I’m starting to wonder if The Fed even remembers Los Boricuas are wrestlers.

I mean, at least the Truth Commission and the Disciples of Apocalypse didn’t also run out and fight in a pile. We’re still about five months from Road Dogg and Billy Gunn figuring out they should also gets some backup instead of putting on Henry Godwinn’s underpants or whatever and running out to lose 4-on-2 fights.

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This week’s round one Light Heavyweight Championship tournament match between Canada’s Own Eric Shelley and Scott Taylor, who is not Jerry Lynn, is so boring they try to improve it by talking to Jeff Jarrett on the phone. Imagine if you tuned into Raw and they were like, “here’s 10 minutes of Tony Nese vs. Sin Cara doing nothing but dropkicks and chinlocks, and we’re gonna spend 8 of it talking to Jason Jordan on speakerphone.”

Scott Taylor wins and moves on to round two of not being Taka Michinoku or Brian Christopher.

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Finally this week, what’s supposed to be Vader vs. Goldust ends up being the fifth fuck finish out of six matches when Goldust hits Vader in the top of the head with a hammer, for some reason. To recap, Mero/Lawler ends with Sable causing a DQ, Outlaws/Boricuas doesn’t happen, minis tag ends with unrelated Kane interference, Rock/Dude Love ends with the Nation and Austin running in, and then this. The only match on the entire show with a finish is SCOTT TAYLOR VS. ERIC SHELLEY.

I’ve got to give it a little love, though, because Vader’s selling of a hammer to the head is maybe his most believable selling ever. He just instantly goes down in a heap, weakly grabs at his head and quivers. I feel like that’s how more people should sell getting kicked in the nuts. If someone boots you between the legs you don’t grab your crotch with both hands, bend your knees slightly and make a big “oh no” face before slowly falling over. If somebody gives you a straight-up boxing uppercut to the junk, you’re going down, and if you aren’t vomiting everywhere you’re at least gonna be bordering on shock.

And that’s how this week’s Raw report ends. With me explaining what happens when you get kicked in the nuts. Thanks, everyone!

Next Week:

Jim Neidhart and Harvey Wippleman join D-Generation X — neither of those is a joke — Shawn Michaels has a confrontation with “Bret Hart,” and Jeff Jarrett decides to ditch the suspenders are start wrestling in gear that makes him look like he’s on Lucha Underground representing an ancient Aztec tribe. Plus, we find out who Goldust’s first friend on FetLife was.

(Check out our must-listen McMahonsplaining podcast with WWE superstar Braun Strowman. Subscribe on iTunes or Google.)

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*calls mom*

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Everyone had a black eye, Vince McMahon had important information on the identity of the man who Screwed Bret, and Rick Rude appeared on tape while also popping up on the week’s live Nitro. So, you know, not much happened.

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re on the road to In Your House: D-Generation X, which I believe comes just before In Your House: Disciples Of Apocalypse.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for November 24, 1997.

Worst: Welcome To The Most Reactionary, Offended Raw Of The Year

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Survivor Series happened. The next night’s Raw was live, so neither the WWF nor WCW really knew what was going to happen. They taped the next week’s Raw that same night, meaning they’d have to make two weeks of post-Survivor Series shows within 24 hours of the event and look like they didn’t know what was going on, while Nitro could, say, scoop up Rick Rude and do an updated live show.

The reason I recapped all of that is because this is the first live Raw since the night after Survivor Series, and the World Wrestling Federation has had two whole weeks to stew over the programming gap and plan their response to WCW’s flag waving and promises of Bret Hart. What that means is that this Raw is extremely offended, and features three (3) separate D-Generation X segments about how they totally don’t care what happened and how everyone else is stupid. Four if you count Sgt. Slaughter threatening to kill himself, but we’ll get to that.

The show opens with former manager and [checks notes] future Women’s Champion Harvey Wippleman cosplaying as Rick Rude, doing Rude’s entrance shtick, and getting pie-faced to the ground by Shawn Michaels. Rick Rude’s spot was an easy one to fill, you see, and D-X doesn’t care. That’s followed by like 10 minutes of Shawn saying he “takes advantage of live airtime,” which we were just told was a pie-faceable offense.

He also notes that Bret Hart is actually still under contract with the World Wrestling Federation until November 30, and promises to have an in-ring confrontation with him later in the night. If your response to that was, “let me guess, he does some bad photoshops of Bret on the TitanTron and has fake Conan O’Brien lips make Bret say Shawn’s the best,” congratulations, you grew up watching wrestling in the 2000s. If your response was, “he dresses up a midget like Bret Hart, doesn’t he,” WELCOME TO THE 1990S.

Welcome to infamous segment #2, in which a little person in a nightmarish, Michael Myers-esque Bret Hart masque of pink death comes to the ring as “Bret Hart” to reenact what happened at Survivor Series. They put him in the Sharpshooter, make him say Shawn MIchaels is great over and over, then slap a “WCW” sign on his butt.

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NOBODY IS UPSET AT ALL, THEY’RE ACTUALLY LAUGHING, THIS IS A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT, heh

If you were a Bret Hart fan when this happened, chances are this is the maddest you ever got at wrestling. It’s incredibly effective as a heel move in that it makes you want to see the entire group get torched to the ground, and a little less when you realize (1) it can’t go anywhere, because Bret is actually gone, and (2) it ends with a member of the Hart Foundation showing up to stand up for Bret only to get duped into joining D-X like a moron.

No, really.

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This is the show where Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart joins D-Generation X. Seriously.

Anvil shows up promising to “kick butt,” and Michaels just kinda talks him out of it. He rationalizes that Bret’s at home, Owen’s at home upset, the British Bulldog is having “fake” knee surgery — something Shawn says he knows all about, pew pew shooting pew pew — so Jim should take advantage of a “one night only opportunity” and join them. And Jim DOES, because DOT DOT DOT QUESTION MARK QUESTION MARK QUESTION MARK.

In fact, Anvil accompanies them to the ring for Shawn’s match with Vader at the end of the night and helps Shawn win. Then, as they’re celebrating, Shawn and Hunter kick the shit out of him. Because OF COURSE THEY DID, because ON WHAT PLANET DOES JIM NEIDHART JOIN D-X TWO WEEKS AFTER THE MONTREAL SCREWJOB AND THINK THEY’RE HIS TRUE PALS.

Also, congratulations to Jim Neidhart’s bullshit here for making him the worst ever member of D-Generation X behind Hornswoggle, The Great Khail and Harvey Wippleman.

Best: Sgt. Slaughter Loses His Mind

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what

In response to all of these D-X goofs (and being Pedigreed out of his shirt last week), Commissioner Slaughter devolves into Sgt. Slaughter and cuts a promo asking Triple H if he’s ever killed anybody with his bare hands, played Russian roulette, or watched his friend get exploded by a landmine. There’s something wonderfully cartoonish about it, especially since the only military service WWF fans ever saw the Sarge give was (1) for the benefit of the Iraq army, or (2) on a cartoon show where army guys fight a snake army with lasers.

Actually the best part is Michael Cole, who still can’t differentiate war reporting with calling pro wrestling and acts like Sarge’s announcement that he’ll be using the Cobra Clutch is a tweet about how he’s gonna nuke North Korea.

But yeah, I really wish the Boot Camp Match at In Your House had paid off Sarge’s threats about stabbing Triple H in his guts with a bayonet instead of the 18 minutes of old man punching we got.

Best: GoldenEye

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If you’re wondering how Vader could lose a match to Shawn Michaels via Jim Neidhart in two and a half minutes instead of, you know, being Big Van Goddamn Vader, it’s because Goldust (and Goldust’s new FetLife connection, Luna Vachon) Two-Faced him.

The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust gets wheeled out by a “nurse” early in the show to reveal that he’s an “invalid,” and that his injury which started out as a sore wrist turned into a broken arm, which then turned into him being crippled and in a wheelchair. Sure! Part of what makes this version of Goldust so great is that it’s brutal and unfortunate to watch, and he’s so legitimately, weirdly uncomfortable to experience that you want to boo him so he’ll stop being in front of you.

Vader shows up to wrist-punch him in the ear or whatever, causing the nurse to unmask as Luna and throw alcohol in his eyes. That leads to Vader spending the rest of the night with a maxi-pad on his face, and leaves him susceptible to secret ringside beatdowns from Raw’s most desperate Hart Adjace.

Worst: The Almost D-X Is Doing Well, Too

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In fact, this already heavily D-X-friendly episode also happens to be the one where the New Age Outlaws pin the Legion of Doom to become WWF Tag Team Champions. And the one where they get their entrance theme. Things are turning out nicely for this one little pod of guys!

This is pretty awful, as you’d expect. The Legion of Doom are so over the hill they’ve fallen off the side of the hill and rolled down into a ditch, and the crowd’s starting to figure that out. The Outlaws are the dirt worst in the ring, which never really changes, and they’re still figuring out how connecting with the crowd works without screaming “shut up” and dropping f-bombs on everyone. They get about 6 1/2 minutes, which feels like 30, before Road Dogg stops a Doomsday Device with a steel chair to the back of Animal and Billy Gunn rolls him up for three.

The good news is that the Outlaws winning the Tag Team Championship legitimizes them as a team and gives them the foundation they’d need to really connect and become important characters on the show. The bad news is that we’ve got a lot of bad wrestling to get through before we get there.

Best: Kane Saves Us From The Worst Match Of All Time

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If you’ve spent the past year reading our vintage Best and Worst columns, what’s the worst 1997 WCW vs. 1997 WWF match you could imagine? Or that you could imagine ME imagining, I guess? If your answer was, “Jeff Jarrett vs. Crush,” first you’re heartless for thinking that into existence, but second YOU’RE CORRECT.

This is supposed to be Jeff Jarrett’s “wrestling debut” and the debut the awful “JJ” gear that looks like he bought it at a Santa Fe gift shop. And it’s supposed to be against Crush, and also the world’s supposed to open up and swallow me whole. But hey, thank goodness for two small miracles:

• Jarrett won’t “play ball” unless Vince McMahon does and give him a plush dressing room, because his new character is like a Tennessee upper-middle-class Raven, meaning he won’t actually be wrestling
• Kane attacks Crush in the ring, Tombstoning and “injuring” him out of the company

Up next, Hacksaw Jim Duggan takes on Ahmed Johnson. Duggan pulls a roll of tape out of his underwear and tries to cheat to win, but Ahmed pulls an extra knee-pad out of HIS underwear and blocks it. And then I’m guessing he collapses with two broken arms?

Worst: Gang Wares

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In somehow less interesting Gang Warz news, In Your House WWF Championship challenger Ken Shamrock gets a strong win over Savio Vega. After the match he gets threatened by the newest member of Los Boricuas, the Soup Nazi (pictured).

Worst: The Light Heavyweight Tournament Isn’t Getting Any Better

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what are you pointing at, Jerry

To put the Light Heavyweight Championship tournament into perspective, they show Brian Christopher and Jerry Lawler walk to the ring for like 30 seconds, then cut away to the tournament bracket so we miss Christopher’s opponent, “Flanagan,” diving over the ropes onto him. We cut back to the action in time to see Flanagan roll Christopher back into the ring. A few seconds later Flanagan goes after Lawler, leading to Christopher diving over the top rope and sunset flip powerbombing him off the apron to the floor. The camera also misses that. So really, if you’re going by what the camera’s watching, Brian Christopher defeated Flanagan with some vague jumping.

Note: “Flanagan” is of course Flash Flanagan, eventually known as the dreaded KOBAIN from NWA TNA’s weekly pay-per-views. This is his only Raw appearance, but he DOES get to lose several more times on Shotgun Saturday Night.

Best: Beeper 3:16

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Once again saving the show by having absolutely nothing to do with D-Generation X or the Hart Foundation is the Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin feud. Last week, The Rock slid into Austin’s DMs and stole Austin’s Intercontinental Championship. This week, Rock shows up with the belt and the Nation to assure us that he’s the real champion, and that Austin is a piece of trash, and that [eyebrow].

He’s interrupted, however, by a flashing ROCKY SUCKS message on the TitanTron that gets everyone chanting. As it turns out, Stone Cold Steve Austin has invaded the production truck. Austin warns The Rock that when Rocky’s pager flashes “3:16,” it’s his ass. First of all, aw, beepers. Second of all, The Rock is a black turtleneck away from his most popular 90s fashion choice, rocking a denim shirt with jeans and a big-ass fanny pack. Gotta keep the IC title somewhere, as The Rock never figured out he could like, snap the belts around his waist and wear them. Like belts.

Austin provides one more mystery: is his production truck invasion live, or “Memorex?” It’s at that point we see Austin sneak into the ring behind Rock, and are blessed with one of the greatest reactions to pro wrestling bullshit ever:

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That’s still so fantastic. The Rock’s ability to go from “handsome adult” to “surprised Michelle Tanner” in a snap is one of his most underrated qualities, and a big reason people thought/think he’s so funny. He’s never been afraid to look like a total fool, which is how we got moments like this, matches like him losing to The Hurricane, or, I’m assuming, that time he set his name on fire with a flamethrower at WrestleMania.

This feud is such a godsend for the show. It was the clearest message that if the WWF wanted to catch up to WCW, they’d have to more or less kill the past and put their real faith in some new talent. Sure with there was still a WCW around to make them do that these days.

Next Week

Teenage Brandon attends his first-ever live Raw in Roanoke, VA, in time to see Goldust crawl around in a metal bikini and ball gag, watch Jim Neidhart get spray-painted like he’s Ray Traylor feuding with the nWo, and be like five rows away from where Stone Cold Steve Austin drives his truck into the arena for the first time.

(Check out our must-listen McMahonsplaining podcast with wrestling star Deonna Purrazzo. Subscribe on iTunes or Google.)

Late last year we broke the news that porn star Cherie Deville would be making a serious run for the United States Presidency with rapper Coolio as her Vice President and, most importantly for a wrestling site, Wrestling Superstar Virgil as her Secretary of Defense. Pretty soon what started as, “oh, that’s funny,” caught people’s eye as a legitimate campaign (mostly thanks to this presser). The story was picked up by the Huffington Post, Daily Beast and even The Hill, although their emphasis on the possibility of nWo Vincent in the White House was a little less severe than ours.

Now that we’re in deep, it’s time for our possible next President of the United States to go back and watch some clips from the guy she’s hoping will help protect her life. That includes the Million Dollar Man in a cowboy hat, and a special moment in anyone’s life: the first time they see Giant Gonzalez.

Adult star and presidential hopeful Cherie DeVille sits down to watch her personal bodyguard, Virgil in a video featuring the Million dollar man and wrestler “Giant Gonzalez”. Cherie used to be a big fan of the WWF and then WWE, but hasn’t seen a Virgil video in years! Watch her reactions to the politically incorrect promo with the Million Dollar Man, and his match with Giant Gonzalez.

Don’t forget to support her presidential campaign at WWW.PORNSTARFORPRESIDENT.COM – Cherie DeVille is running for President with Coolio as her Vice President. International models Khloe Terae & Kennedy Summers are connected to the campaign as is adult star Alix Lynx. DeVille/Coolio 2020

Goal #2: sit Cherie DeVille down and show her the Virgil angle that inspired the most controversial moment from season 1 of GLOW. Part of me thinks that’d hurt her chances at the Presidency, but then again, America.