Hello guys, I hope your boxing day was good and you are prepped up for a nice weekend.
We will hit another Royal Rumble today and another one of those Rumbles that happened during the "rebuilding phase" of the WWF/E. As I re-watch this Rumble it was truly a rough period for the WWF roster with a lot of mid-carders and unknown AAA guys (??).
However, it had Steve Austin, and they were smart enough to bring him in early and work him hard. Ladies and gentlemen the 1997 Royal Rumble. Enjoy.
We will hit another Royal Rumble today and another one of those Rumbles that happened during the "rebuilding phase" of the WWF/E. As I re-watch this Rumble it was truly a rough period for the WWF roster with a lot of mid-carders and unknown AAA guys (??).
However, it had Steve Austin, and they were smart enough to bring him in early and work him hard. Ladies and gentlemen the 1997 Royal Rumble. Enjoy.
I have such conflicted thoughts on this Rumble. On the one hand, the roster is really thin, and a big chunk of it is pretty dull as a result. On the other hand, the stuff with Austin is just absolutely fantastic, and the ending is awesome and ended up setting up one of my absolute favorite years of WWF ever.
ReplyDeleteThat is an insane final 8 in retrospect. Austin, Bret, Rock, Foley, Funk, Kane, Undertaker and Vader. Greatest of all time when it comes to accumulated careers, though only two or three were legitimate main-eventers at the time (and that DOESN'T include Austin. Stone Cold WWF PPV main events as of January 1997: 0)
ReplyDeleteI didn't think that it should have been before the HBK title match. Being in San Antonio, though, it makes sense. As a huge Hart fan, it still makes me mad what Austin did to him!
ReplyDeleteThat's the fun aspect of this Rumble, you can see where the promotion wanted to be and some of the guys they wanted to help them get there.
ReplyDeleteWhat was with halls 20 second spot here? He didnt turn up in wcw until may. Did vince essentially know hall was leaving at this point?
ReplyDeleteUm...
ReplyDeleteNot sure if trolling.
That was "fake Razor" Rick Borgner (I think was his name).
ReplyDeleteOh. Was watching a little on my phone and it was fuzzy. Swore it was the real hall
ReplyDeleteHe's just not a very good poster at all. It's a shoot, brother.
ReplyDeleteYou get this is a wrestling blog and not a high brow IQ competition, right? You're an office adminstrator, aka glorified secretary. You're doing great!
ReplyDeleteI remember someone, maybe Nash (even though he was in WCW at this point), saying WWE only had about 26 guys on contract at this point. That's the reason for the working agreement with AAA. Vince wanted to tap into this Cruiserweight thing, but went at it completely half assed, including using guys in their 50s. Although Perro Aguayo's spots in that six man are some of the most laugh out loud moments you could get in wrestling to that point.
ReplyDeleteThe quietest big crowd EVER.
ReplyDeleteThe first real pop of the match came when Ahmed Johnson chased Farooq with that 2x4.
ReplyDeleteI'll always have a soft spot for the Jerry Lawler spot.
ReplyDeleteThe Raw the night after this was INSANE and truly laid the groundwork for Bret's whiny heel character and the surreal work/shoot atmosphere of the WWF throughout 1997. Austin's disparaging promo of Bret after he quits is awesome, too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this was a pretty big draw for the WWF then. Yeah, the attendance reads as 60,000 (with upwards of 15,000 comped), but even drawing 45,000 around this time was a fairly huge number. Vince just seemed to think Shawn was capable of drawing the full 70,000 with the whole hometown boy bullshit. No wonder Shawn faked ANOTHER injury soon after.
ReplyDeleteThis was the continuation of a little fun run of wacky royal rumble endings. You had the Bret/luger who fell first, hbk's only 1 foot hit the floor and Austin's no one saw me go over the top so I will just go right back in.
ReplyDeleteI wish wwe had more crazy endings like that. My favorite one is when Vince tears both quads trying to prevent another wacky ending.
Yes and no. The show did a pretty pitiful gate for even 48,000 paid -- so even the tickets that were sold were extremely cut rate. There are Nitros and Raws from the next year drawing comparable and better gates with 20k paid fans.
ReplyDeleteI haven't watch this on years - is that the infamous ringside one where he goes in from the announce booth gets knocked out almost at once and goes back on the mic like nothing happened,
ReplyDeleteIn 1996, Hall was too busy jobbing to Goldustin to worry about any rumbling royale
ReplyDeleteDidn't the USWA do an angle with fake Razor and Diesel - where they were repackaged as Rick Titan and Doomsday?
ReplyDeleteMore like, "What do you mean i gotta drop the strap back to Bret at Mania XIII Vince?"
ReplyDeleteLol Knee Injury.
Mil mascaras actually gets the crowd going with his flying headbutt.
ReplyDeleteI always laugh at Lawler getting thrown out of the ring and going right back on commentary like nothing happened.
ReplyDeleteThis was one of the First Rumbles I ever rented from Video Update. I agree with your statement. Lawler getting eliminated and then going back to commentary was gold.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was papered a lot more than that?
ReplyDelete26 guys? Holy Crap. Should of just let some ECW guys in the match for 5-10min each.
ReplyDeleteI understand this is primarily a wrestling blog. I enjoy having discussions about wrestling on this blog. You are not a very good poster on this wrestling blog.
ReplyDeleteI'll take 8 more Bic pens and 1 more stapler please.
ReplyDeleteThe crowd losing its shit when they thought Santino had just won the Rumble only to have Alberto tear their collective heart out by sneaking back in is a personal favorite. It's too bad they completely wasted that ending on ADR, because it's one of the best Rumble endings ever in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThey papered that crowd heavily. If I remember right, the last few days before the show they were giving away tickets for like $10 just to make sure they had a decent crowd.
ReplyDeleteWas the Mil Mascaras elimination spot planned or was it a fuck up on his part?
ReplyDeleteI can picture the 1997 IWC seeing this show and yelling that Steve Austin got buried, because he lost clean to Bret 2 months prior, and now Bret got the clear elimination, only for Austin to cheat and get a tainted win. (Followed by Austin being the 1st eliminated in the final 4 PPV match, followed by another clean loss at WM... And then a DQ win over Bret the next PPV, a loss vs Taker for the title, a no-contest vs HBK, and a clean loss at Canadian Stampede in the 10 man tag)
ReplyDeleteIt's actually amazing how many times Austin lost after winning the KOTR. I feel that he got over not by winning, but by never giving up. (Which is actually comparable to what Daniel Bryan is going through right now. The more he gets screwed over, the louder the fans cheer.)
Cornette goes into a good explanation of this on his 1997 Timeline
ReplyDeleteI think one of the clear differences is that the Bret/Austin story was built around the fact that Austin wasn't on Bret's level, at least not at that point in time. As the feud progressed you saw the pendulum begin to swing in the other direction. Had we got the supposed Wrestlemania XIV main event rematch of Bret vs. Austin, then I think history would be kinder to this sort of retrospective because Austin would've won completing the story arc.
ReplyDeleteI think Mascaras wanted to get out of putting anyone over, oblivious to the fact that he would look like an idiot in the process.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess Owen/Bulldog/Anvil/Pillman was the Shield, and Austin was a solid B+ at the time. :)
ReplyDeleteHere's a clip about it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIKBDHNYeII
If the Austin vs Bret feud was able to come to that conclusion, with Bret Jobbing cleanly in the WM XIV Main Event to pass the torch to Austin, it would have been the best, most perfectly booked feud in WWF history. Instead, Austin vs Bret is only one of the best. Too bad something else got in the way.
ReplyDeleteMascaras is fucking terrible in the match. He doesn't sell anything for any of the American wrestlers, eliminates the other two luchadores in the ring, then eliminates himself to avoid having to let anyone else do it. It's almost like a punchline to a Triple H joke.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think that was the first time that the typical wrestling fan could look at the situation and think 'Well, Austin did cheat, but he's got a point here - Bret IS being a whiner lately.'
ReplyDeleteI wasn't really watching wrestling at all during this time, but was this the first Rock-Austin match?
ReplyDeleteRock had just arrived at Survivor Series, so probably.
ReplyDeleteThis might not get rave reviews, but fuck it. Austin was fun in this one.
ReplyDeleteI think this was when I truly started rooting for Austin all the way when I was a kid.
Are we not counting the times Austin threw someone out then? He got some pretty decent pops in the middle of all that.
ReplyDeleteCool little clip and fun to hear Cornette's analysis.
ReplyDeleteIIRC tickets sold very slowly and they were basically dumping them in the days leading up to the show. There were several radio promotions and I think reports of selling packs of tickets (like 4 tickets) for $5 or $10.
Exactly what I came here to say. It's not a ***** or even **** Rumble, but it's a ton of fun and really well booked, and tells a bunch of different miniature stories along the way.
ReplyDeleteIts major weakness is the total lack of starpower for most of its duration - and Austin's one man 45 minute blinder more than makes up for that.
I'm just gonna leave this here...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OwM37PNQDs
Mil Mascaras: Mexican Triple H before Trips meant anything.
ReplyDeleteIt went against the natural logic of wrestling. Austin was still a heel, he is supposed to cheat. And the babyface is supposed to be noble enough to win without cheating and mature enough to handle a disputed loss knowing that eventually what comes around will go around.
ReplyDeleteYou can't go around complaining about the cheater cheating and why no one stopped him.
If they had the gimmicks they got later - yes. But with Rocky Maivia with blue trunks and Fake Diesel...
ReplyDeleteI believe there were also deals with a couple of local fast food joints to paper it as well ("Buy two burritos and get a Royal Rumble ticket!").
ReplyDeleteThat Shawn/Vader rematch sounds more interesting than what we got. Too bad Vader never got his minor run with the belt.
ReplyDeleteToo bad it had that half hour stretch of Cena and Hornswaggle tossing jobbers.
ReplyDeleteA $480K gate is never a pitiful number, let's get that straight, especially for that promotion at that time. But Cornette's point is pretty simple as they could have done a similar gate at an arena with regularly priced tickets. The Rumble has never been a Stadium show because it's never been marketed to as one and it's never been required to sell 50K tickets even when the WWF was hot and could have probably managed it. But to sell that volume of tickets takes a LOT of promotions and usually a ton of help from the city. That's why Wrestlemania works as a stadium show -- the hosting city puts in a lot of work and gives the WWE a lot of assistance in promoting the event.
ReplyDelete