What the World Was Watching: SummerSlam 1997

by Logan Scisco

So after a six week or so absence I’m back.  My reviews got backed up because of some graduate work and some teaching responsibilities, but we pick back up with the 1997 edition of SummerSlam.  Heading into the pay-per-view the WWF gang wars were heating up between the Nation of Domination, Los Boricuas, and the Disciples of Apocalypse, Steve Austin was becoming the top guy in the company, the Undertaker’s secret of allegedly killing his mother and father was revealed by Paul Bearer, who also revealed that the Undertaker’s brother Kane was alive, and the Hart Foundation had lots of enemies, including, but not limited to, Shawn Michaels, Austin, Ken Shamrock, Goldust, and the Legion of Doom.  There’s also a lingering feud between Mankind and Hunter Hearst Helmsley that has been going on since the King of the Ring.

-It should be said that this pay-per-view has the best video package in WWF history as it discusses how “life isn’t fair” in the WWF.

-Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, and Jerry “the King” Lawler are in the booth and they are live from East Rutherford, New Jersey.

-Opening Steel Cage Contest:  Mankind defeats Hunter Hearst Helmsley (w/Chyna) by climb out at 16:13:

Mick Foley reverts to his original WWF gimmick for the blowoff of the summer feud with his biggest rival in the company.  Escape rules are in effect for this match and the cage is in use to keep Chyna away, but she gets involved on several occasions by choking Mankind with a chain and then crotching him on the top of the cage so Helmsley can hit a superplex.  Helmsley could leave and win after that, but refuses to do so and Mankind takes a series of sick head-first bumps into the cage.  In a creative spot, Helmsley locks his legs into the cage to block a suplex when Mankind lifts him above his head, but Mankind breaks the suplex and then crashes into Helmsley as he dangles from the cage.  When Helmsley gets caught in the ropes, Mankind goes for the door, but Chyna slams the cage door into Mankind’s face, tosses the referee into the steps, and tosses Helmsley a chair, but Mankind blocks a Pedigree on it and slingshots Helmsley into the cage, which sends Chyna, who is hanging onto the cage, into the guardrail.  Mankind climbs out, but right before he gets to the bottom he tosses off his mask and climbs to the top of the cage, rips open his shirt, and delivers an elbow drop off the top of it to mimic his hero Jimmy Snuka before leaving for good.  This was a very spot-oriented cage match and the escape rules hurt it, as they do most cage matches, but the spots were fun and the ending sequence sent the crowd into a frenzy.  Rating:  ***½

-After the match, as Mankind lay on the ground outside of the cage, Dude Love’s music plays over the loud speakers and that gets Mankind back to his feet and he dances to the back.

-Kevin Kelly and Sunny hype the Superstar line.  Call 1-900-737-4WWF to speak to the wrestlers after their matches tonight!

-Todd Pettengill interviews New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, who gets booed out of the building.  Whitman’s elimination of an entertainment tax on pro wrestling led to this SummerSlam being brought to New Jersey.  WWF President Gorilla Monsoon presents her with a replica WWF title belt as McMahon hypes her as a possible president, which shows how dated this show is.

-Tiger Ali Singh is shown in the crowd with Tiger Jeet Singh.

-Footage of the SummerSlam Party in the Continental Airlines Arena parking lot from earlier in the day is shown.

-Brian Pillman cuts a pre-taped promo saying that he doesn’t plan on wearing a dress.

-Goldust (w/Marlena) pins “The Loose Cannon” Brian Pillman with a sunset flip after Marlena decks Pillman with her purse at 7:16:

The stipulation for this match is that if Pillman loses he has to wear a dress and presumably, Jim Neidhart has to shave off his goatee since Neidhart said he would do so if any member of the Hart Foundation lost  a match on the show.  Outside of the stipulation, there isn’t a lot to add interest to the match, even when Pillman DDT’s Goldust on the arena floor.  Goldust nearly breaks his neck on a sunset flip, but he can’t abort doing the move because it’s the finishing sequence, so he grabs Pillman’s legs until Marlena interjects herself to produce the ending.  After the match, Pillman throws a tantrum over having to wear a dress tomorrow night.  This match did not build any momentum and was a big mess.  Rating:  *

-Call 815-734-1161 to get your SummerSlam 1997 t-shirt for $25 (plus $6 shipping & handling)!

-The Legion of Doom cut a promo where they tell the Godwinns that payback will be hell.

-The Legion of Doom defeat The Godwinns when Hawk pins Henry after a spike piledriver at 9:15:

This is a small feud started when the LOD broke Henry Godwinn’s neck a few months back on Shotgun Saturday Night.  The Godwinns go for some cheap heat by taunting fans with a Confederate flag.  The match gets off to a good start, as both teams brawling styles nicely complement each other, but Phineas slows the match down in the middle.  Hawk gets the hot tag and the LOD push their way to victory shortly thereafter.  This would have been a very serviceable match if they had only given it five minutes.  Rating:  *½

-Pettengill, Sable, and Sunny host the Million Dollar Challenge contest, but no one picks the correct key to open the casket with one million dollars so no one wins, which had to be a relief to McMahon considering the company’s finances at the time.  There is a funny moment when one of the contestants that they call isn’t even watching the pay-per-view.

-A video package chronicles the British Bulldog-Ken Shamrock feud.

-European Championship Match:  The British Bulldog (Champion) defeats Ken Shamrock by disqualification when Shamrock nails the Bulldog with a can of dog food at 7:27:

The special Hart Foundation stipulation on this match is that if the Bulldog loses he will eat a can of dog food.  There is some great intensity to start the match, as Shamrock wastes little time going after the Bulldog, but the Bulldog slows it all down by reverting to a succession of chinlocks.  The Bulldog tosses some dog food in Shamrock’s face on the floor and that causes Shamrock to snap and get disqualified because a can of dog food classifies as a foreign object (or would it be an “international object” in WCW’s case?).  After the match, Shamrock chokes out the Bulldog and then gives Pat Patterson, Gerald Brisco, and a host of other WWF referees belly-to-belly suplexes when they get him off of the Bulldog.  This was much more suited for Monday Night Raw than SummerSlam, but the crowd really got into Shamrock going crazy.  Rating:  **

-Pettengill interviews Shawn Michaels, who says that his issues with Bret Hart were settled at WrestleMania XII when he beat him.  He promises to call tonight’s main event down the middle.

-A video package hypes the WWF gang wars, centering most of its attention on the Disciples of Apocalypse and Los Boricuas.

-Los Boricuas defeats The Disciples of Apocalypse when Miguel Perez pins Chainz after an elbow drop at 9:07:

Looking back, this gang wars feud did relatively little for anyone involved in it and the big stars of this match have to be Skull and 8-Ball, who managed to stick around into late 1998 with their existing gimmick.  Everyone else was jobber fodder or out of the company by that point.  Ross’s job during the match is to be a point man for who is fighting who, since McMahon keeps messing it up, but after a few minutes Ross just gives up.  This would have been better booked as a street fight, since it was more in keeping with the gang wars and would have worked around some of the limitations of the participants.  The Nation of Domination marches down to ringside through the crowd to create another distraction and thereby prevent anything from really developing in this match.  Chainz is knocked out of the ring and when he punches Ahmed Johnson he is on the receiving end of a Pearl River Plunge on the floor and Savio Vega rolls Chainz in, where Miguel Perez delivers an elbow drop and covers for the victory.  After the match, all the gangs fight each other before the camera crews get tired of covering it.  This was awful, as action happened in the ring but mattered little and since it didn’t matter it was a chore to watch.  Rating:  DUD

-A video package hypes the Owen Hart-Steve Austin Intercontinental title match.

-Michael Cole tries to interview Steve Austin on his way to the ring, but Austin tells him to get out of his way or he is going to kick his ass.

-Intercontinental Championship Match:  “Stone Cold” Steve Austin defeats Owen Hart (Champion) with a school boy to win the title at 16:15:

Austin continues his slow climb up the card in this match as he gets a crack at the Intercontinental title and a chance to avenge taking the pin to Owen at Canadian Stampede.  This is also a quasi-“kiss my ass” match, as Austin promised to do so if he lost to Owen in this match.  Owen tries to immediately go for the legs, but Austin fights him off and a great technical battle ensues with lots of counters and believable near-falls.  In the midst of Austin fighting out of a chinlock and Owen getting out of a tilt-a-whirl, Owen delivers an inverted piledriver, not the tombstone piledriver that the two had agreed to prior to the match, and Austin goes noticeably limp.  Owen tries to bide time and he taunts the crowd, which enables Austin to carefully crawl over and weakly school boy Owen to win his first WWF singles title.  It’s amazing that Austin was able to finish the match in any way and this match is a reminder to all wrestlers of the things that can do wrong in the course of a match.  That single piledriver nearly changed the entire course of WWF history, as the loss of Austin could have destroyed an entire year’s worth of booking and perhaps prevented the company from overtaking WCW in 1998.  Thankfully for Austin he was able to resume his in-ring career by November, but the neck injury shortened his career and made him more of a brawler than the technical wrestler he had once been.  It’s tough to rate the match since it had to stop halfway through, but up to the piledriver it was working up a good pace.  Rating:  ***½

-After the match, you can tell something is wrong because three officials come to the ring to help Austin and get him to the locker room, but true to Austin form he leaves on his own two feet and isn’t stretchered out.

-A video package hypes the Bret Hart-Undertaker main event.

-The announcers discuss the evening’s WWF title match.

-WWF Championship Match:  Bret “the Hitman” Hart defeats The Undertaker (Champion) to win the title after Shawn Michaels inadvertently hit the Undertaker with a chair at 28:19:

There are lots of stipulations in this match.  If Bret loses, he promises not to wrestle in the United States again.  Shawn Michaels, Bret’s mortal enemy, is the special guest referee for this match, but if he fails to call the match fairly then he will not wrestle in the United States again either.  The Undertaker is sort of the odd man out in this match, as the Bret-Shawn issue completely overshadows him, and his title reign since WrestleMania has been lackluster and devoid of quality opponents.  The Undertaker’s issue with Paul Bearer has nothing to do with this match either, so his only motivation is defending the title and while that might be enough for some, the lack of a clear direction for the Undertaker with the title after this made a title switch here fairly predictable.  Continuing his metamorphosis into Nikolai Volkoff 2.0, Bret demands that the crowd stand for the Canadian national anthem.  Bret has an entertaining spin on looking at the WWF title before the match, as he takes it out of Michaels hands, poses with it, and then clocks the Undertaker to kick off the match.  The Undertaker goes for Bret’s back, but Bret survives the onslaught and targets the Undertaker’s left leg as this match starts to resemble their 1996 Royal Rumble encounter, dead crowd and all.  Paul Bearer makes a short appearance to wake them up and he distracts the Undertaker after a figure-four, which allows Bret to keep the advantage.  After enduring almost seven minutes of leg damage, the Undertaker rallies to plant Bret with a chokeslam, but Michaels is distracted by trying to send Owen Hart and Brian Pillman, who have wandered out to ringside, to the locker room.  Bret tries to take advantage of the Undertaker’s anger at the lack of a count with a school boy, but that only gets two.  After enduring about ten “moves of doom,” the Undertaker mounts a rally, forgetting the leg damage as he delivers a flying clothesline and a leg drop, but Bret crotches him when he goes for the rope walk and hits a superduperplex, which allows him to lock in the Sharpshooter.  However, the Undertaker kicks out of the move, but Bret escapes the Tombstone and locks in a sloppy Sharpshooter with the help of the ring post.  When the Undertaker kicks out of that, Bret goes crashing into Michaels on the floor, but that enables Bret to grab a chair and smash the Undertaker in the face with it.  Michaels comes into the ring to make the count, but he gets in too late, so it’s only a two count and Bret is not happy.  Michaels confronts Bret about the chair, leading Bret to spit on Michaels, which hits him in the face and not on the shirt as intended if you believe Bret’s autobiography, and Michaels in anger swings the chair, which clocks the Undertaker when Bret ducks and Bret captures his then-record tieing fifth WWF championship when Michaels reluctantly counts the pin.  I did not care for the Undertaker forgetting some of the psychology as the match went along, but this match still told a great story of Bret trying his conventional offense and when it didn’t work descending into heel tactics and when that faltered, using Michaels hatred of him to his advantage to win the contest.  This match also set up a great fall feud between the Undertaker and Michaels, of which Bret would get inserted at the end, thereby becoming the odd man out like the Undertaker was in this contest.  Rating:  ****

The Final Report Card:  This show is quite hit or miss.  The bad stuff is bad, but the good stuff is quite good and when the show finishes you remember more about the good than the bad, mostly because Austin-Owen and Bret-Undertaker are memorable contests and you don’t forget Foley jumping off the cage early in the night either.  That alone makes this a thumbs up.

Attendance:  20,213

Buyrate:  0.80

Show Evaluation:  Thumbs Up