by Logan Scisco
-Footage of the
Undertaker tossing a fire ball into Paul Bearer’s face at In Your House last
night is shown.
-Vince McMahon, Jim
Ross, and Jerry “the King” Lawler are in the booth and they are live from
Binghamton, New York.
-McMahon interviews
Steve Austin, who will face Bret Hart in a street fight tonight. McMahon announces that Austin will get a
title shot at the next In Your House pay-per-view, but Austin just tells him to
shut up because Bret Hart is the topic of conversation tonight. Austin demands that Bret show up within a
minute to fight him, but Bret pops up on the Titantron with the Hart Foundation
and says that he’ll face Austin in a street fight tonight. Bret runs down the American fan base lust for
violence and complains that Austin has a title match at In Your House. After those comments, Austin heads to the
locker room.
-Opening
Contest: The Sultan (w/The Iron Sheik)
defeats Ahmed Johnson by disqualification at 4:50:
At the beginning of the match, McMahon makes the
outrageous claim that during the WWF’s tour of South Africa Ahmed received more
acclaim than Nelson Mandela ever did. This
is a boring brawl, but Ahmed does bust out an impressive facebuster from a
suplex position. Ahmed is on the verge
of putting the Sultan away when the Nation of Domination shows up on the
entrance stage. Ahmed grabs a 2x4 and he
bashes the Sultan with it to make a statement to the Nation and loses. Rating: ½*
-Sunny comes out in
an oversized Undertaker t-shirt. Hendrix
urges us to buy it for $20 (plus shipping & handling) and that we should
call 815-734-1161 to get it. It’s so odd
seeing the WWF sell merchandise on their shows like this fifteen years later.
-Austin is shown
trying to break into the Hart Foundation’s locker room and Bret gets some WWF
stooges to tell Austin to go away.
-Ken Shamrock comes
out for commentary and McMahon announces that Vader will face Shamrock at In
Your House in a No Holds Barred match.
-Ross announces
that Tiger Ali Singh won the sixteen man tournament for the second Kuwaiti
Cup.
-Vader’s bullying
of a Kuwait newscaster on “Good Morning Kuwait”, which earned him a trip to a
Kuwaiti jail, is shown. Lawler shows off
a funny drawing of Vader shoveling camel dung in the desert based on this
incident. Shamrock says he doesn’t like
bullies, thereby making him the first WWF superstar to advocate the “Be a Star”
campaign’s agenda, and he challenges Mike Tyson to a match in the WWF.
-Footage of Austin
yelling at McMahon at ringside after slapping off his headset during the
commercial break is shown.
-Get your tickets
for the WrestleMania Revenge Tour, where Sid & The Undertaker battle Vader
and Mankind, Ahmed Johnson faces Faarooq, and Steve Austin & The Legion of
Doom battle the Hart Foundation!
-Street
Fight: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin defeats
Bret “the Hitman at 8:23:
The purpose behind this one is that Austin is angry about
not finishing off Bret last night and thinks he can do it here, while Bret is
reluctant to fight Austin on his own.
Before the match can get underway, Owen Hart and the British Bulldog
attack Austin from behind and Bret joins in for a three-on-one attack. However, Shawn Michaels comes through the
crowd with a chair and eliminates Owen and the Bulldog. Bret goes to Pillmanize Austin’s leg, but
Austin moves and then begins wearing out Bret’s knee with the chair. Austin applies the Sharpshooter and refuses
to break the hold when WWF officials hit the ring. Pat Patterson eventually helps the officials
get Austin off of Bret. No official
winner is declared in this one, but for all intents and purposes Austin won
this battle of the feud. This is
somewhat difficult to rate, but it was an entertaining brawl.
-WWF President
Gorilla Monsoon tells Austin that he’s out of control and Austin says he’s not
done tonight and doesn’t care about Monsoon’s rules. Monsoon bans Austin from the arena, to which
Austin threatens him up, and all of this takes place as the Hart Foundation
helps Bret to the locker room. Seeing
Monsoon and Austin go at it is quite entertaining since the voice of the 1980s
is facing off with the top superstar of the 1990s.
-Tiger Ali Singh
pins Salvatore Sincere with a spinning heel kick at 4:49:
In the discussion of guys the WWF put money on that never
panned out, Tiger Ali Singh has to be near the top of the list. This is Singh’s RAW debut and he would
disappear for a year after this match.
The match is technically fine, as Sincere dominates much of the action
and sells well for the rookie, who needs more proficiency running the
ropes. A random spinning heel kick gets
the victory, but it’s an underwhelming debut.
Rating: *½
-Paramedics take
Bret to the ambulance and the Bulldog and Owen are great here, as they keep
yelling at the paramedics for bumping over cables and wires and not adequately
taking care of Bret. Like a horror film,
the camera pans inside the ambulance, where Austin is in the driver’s seat and
he moves to the back to attack Bret.
Owen and the Bulldog come to Bret’s aid, but more damage has been
done. That’s one of the more creative
attack segments in wrestling history, capped by Owen’s “what kind of crap is
this?” at the end.
-Owen and the
Bulldog are shown looking for Austin backstage.
-Rockabilly (w/The
Honky Tonk Man) defeats “The Real Double J” Jesse James with a Shake, Rattle, and Roll at 8:48:
Since their match at In Your House last night was so
great we get a rematch between these two.
Rockabilly is such a terrible gimmick, as Billy is just wearing his
usual cowboy attire. There’s a funny
exchange on commentary as Lawler says he trusts the Honky Tonk Man’s judgment
and Ross asks him “What's going on? Are you two related?” to which Lawler responds
“Maybe.” Like the previous night’s
encounter, this one goes on far too long and it kills the crowd. After a ridiculously long time, Rockabilly
hits the Shake, Rattle, and Roll to get his first victory. Really?
Why give Rockabilly the win here instead of last night when he
debuted? After the match, James attacks
Rockabilly but is nailed from behind by the Honky Tonk Man, who delivers two
sick guitar shots. Rating: ¼*
-Austin is shown
arguing with Shawn Michaels in the locker room and WWF President Gorilla
Monsoon attempts to mediate to no avail.
It’s as if Monsoon is trying to mediate a conflict in an eleventh grade
classroom.
-Mankind’s
head-first plunge through an announce table last night is the Castro Super
Clean Slam of the Week.
-Mankind says Paul
Bearer didn’t cry when his flesh was burning last night.
-Non-Title
Match: The Undertaker (WWF Champion)
defeats Hunter Hearst Helmsley (w/Chyna) by disqualification at 12:14 shown
when Mankind interferes:
It’s the beginning of an era, as the Undertaker doesn't want to wait for Helmsley’s ornate entrance and decks him in the aisle. McMahon makes a great comment as he claims Helmsley can’t love Chyna because he can’t love anyone except for
himself. I know he’s talking about the
character, but fifteen years later it can make you laugh. This is merely a placeholder match, since
nothing is on the line and it doesn’t advance a specific story. Dustin Rhodes, without his Goldust gear, is
shown sitting in the crowd with Marlena, who Ross acknowledges as “Terri”
thereby setting up the quasi-shoot interview he will give on RAW about his
life. The Undertaker withstands a lot of
punishment, but during his comeback Mankind appears with a blowtorch, which is
just an insane plot development.
Helmsley wisely flees and Mankind KO’s the Undertaker with the metal
casing of the torch, but after he lights it up again, the Undertaker sits up
and fights Mankind through the crowd.
Well, the match wasn’t that exciting, since it was largely a kick-punch
affair, but that twist at the end was wild.
Rating: *
-After the
Undertaker and Mankind brawl to the back, Marlena chokes Chyna with a leather
strap from behind in the crowd and Goldust/Dustin Rhodes brawls with
Helmsley. That was a great plot point
for Marlena-Chyna, since Chyna made her debut choking Marlena from the crowd a
couple of months prior to this.
-The Motel 6 Rewind
is Austin’s attack on Bret earlier in the show.
-Austin comes out
to be interviewed by McMahon a second time.
Austin says he accomplished his objective tonight and he says he doesn’t
need the crowd’s support. Austin says
that the Undertaker will experience a cold day in hell at In Your House and
tells McMahon he won’t be a role model as WWF champion. Owen and the Bulldog attack Austin at the end
of his promo and McMahon tries to help Austin, but Owen tosses him into the
corner. Shawn Michaels comes out and
saves Austin for the second time and McMahon is perplexed, seemingly having
lost control of his show.
-As we get ready to
go off the air, Brian Pillman emerges from the crowd and he attacks Austin with
a chair. Pillman goes to Pillmanize
Austin’s ankle, but Michaels makes the save for the third time.
The Final Report Card: This was the first RAW of the Russo era and
it began with a bang. Bret was taking
some time off for knee surgery, so this was a good way to write him out of the
ring for a while. The ambulance attack
put another memorable moment in Austin’s career and really sold Austin’s rebel
image to the audience. The show also
made a minor plot point that becomes big later:
the bigger on screen role of Vince McMahon as a character, since he got
physically involved at the end and the camera focused on his reaction to Austin
getting laid out by Owen and the Bulldog.
As a mark, I remember watching this show in 1997 and thinking that the
show had moved in a different direction and that I really liked it. After seeing it fifteen years later, I still
enjoyed the Bret-Austin action, but I have to admit that the rest of the show
is terrible. Still, a thumbs up because
the parts you remember are the good ones and the chaos at the end left you
eagerly anticipating next week’s episode.
Monday Night War Rating: 2.8 (vs. 3.4 for Nitro)
Show Evaluation: Thumbs Up