What the World Was Watching: Monday Night Raw - March 23, 1998

by Logan Scisco

-Vince McMahon saying that Steve Austin winning the WWF championship would be a corporate nightmare on last week’s show is replayed.  Austin will have a rebuttal tonight!

-We are really due for a new RAW opening because the original video has some guys like Sid in it that are no longer part of the company.  To compensate, the company is having to splice in lots of recent footage.

-Jim Ross and Michael Cole are doing commentary and they are taped from Tucson, Arizona.  This is the go home show for WrestleMania XIV.

-Kevin Kelly interviews Steve Austin, who says that Vince McMahon cannot mold or break him.  He says that he respects Shawn Michaels as a wrestler, but he will go through McMahon and all of his cronies to get Michaels in the ring and win the WWF title.  Austin says he has lots of “Steveweisers” on hand and will drink them when D-Generation X and Mike Tyson show up later tonight.  Commissioner Slaughter comes out and tells Austin that he will wrestle the Rock tonight on McMahon’s orders.  Despite Austin saying that he will comply, Slaughter threatens him with making his WrestleMania match against Michaels non-title and that sends Austin into a rage and he gives Slaughter a Stone Cold Stunner.  The approaching angle really makes Slaughter’s role irrelevant, so this is about all he is good for at this point.  1 for 1

-Opening Contest:  Cactus Jack & Chainsaw Charlie beat The Quebecers by disqualification when the New Age Outlaws interfere at 3:50:

Ross spends much of this match hyping the New Age Outlaw title defense at WrestleMania against Cactus and Chainsaw and explaining the rules of their scheduled dumpster match.  During the match, the New Age Outlaws come out in black coat and tie, set up tables by the entrance, and have dates with Cactus and Chainsaw blow up dolls.  Very passable match here, as the Outlaws antics near the entrance receive the most attention and everyone put in the minimal amount of effort prior to the disqualification.  After the bell, the Outlaws blast Cactus with a champagne bucket, break their table across Chainsaw’s head, and give Cactus a spike piledriver on a chair.  Rating:  ¾* (1 for 2)

-Shawn Michaels giving Steve Austin Sweet Chin Music two weeks ago on RAW is the Bop It Slam of the Week.  It sort of defeats the purpose of the Slam of the Week if it is something that happened two weeks ago, no?

-Jeff Jarrett (w/Tennessee Lee) beats Steve Blackman when he falls on top of Blackman during a superplex attempt and Lee holds Blackman’s foot down at 2:24:

Jarrett busts out the electric horse entrance for the second straight week.  Blackman is a solid hand, but there is nothing that helps him stand out on this roster and he’s very bland.  Jarrett cheats to hand Blackman his first loss and when another referee comes down to correct the injustice, Jarrett intelligently knocks him out with a right hand.  This match is actually leading somewhere and starts a two month feud between these two.  This new gimmick is definitely putting Jarrett on the road to the main event!

-D-Generation X and Mike Tyson are shown arriving at the arena in a white limousine.

-Kane’s rampage on last week’s show and his confrontation with the Undertaker is replayed.

-The Undertaker cuts a promo by his parents gravesite.  He asks his parents to forgive him for fighting Kane and he is ready to burn in hell if he does not defeat Kane.  Weird promo to see the Undertaker cut, since its more sentimental than what we usually see.  That said, it did not add anything new to the feud.  1 for 3

-Paul Bearer and Kane come out and Bearer makes fun of the Undertaker promo we just saw.  Bearer says that Kane has equal powers to the Undertaker and to prove it, Kane ignites some of the lights in the arena, fries some of the announcer electronic equipment, and blasts out one of the spotlights.  Bearer gives Kane free reign for his last trick and he decides to set a member of the camera crew on fire.  Pretty hokey segment that turned into “Kane’s magical illusion show.”  Cole’s awful explanation of the segment where he keeps telling us that Kane set a man on fire over and over again also doesn’t help.  1 for 4

-The New Midnight Express (w/Jim Cornette) wrestle The Disciples of Apocalypse  to a double disqualification at 3:33:

It takes less than a minute for the Headbangers to come down to the ring for a closer look at the Express and the Rock N’ Roll Express come out as well.  Soon it becomes a parade of teams that will be in the WrestleMania tag team battle royal, as Savio Vega and Miguel Perez, Jesus and Jose, the Quebecers, and the Truth Commission come out.  With all of those teams around ringside it doesn’t take long for them to start fighting and have that fight spill into the ring, thereby rendering this match meaningless.  This is only notable because Los Boricuas EXPLODES as Perez and Jesus fight.  The crowd works up an “LOD” chant and Ross says that is not going to happen because they have broken up for good…or have they?   Not a very good debut for the Express, but that was not really the goal of this.  Rating:  ½* (1 for 5)

-Jerry Lawler joins the commentary team for the second hour.  I can’t wait until we get Ross and Lawler on a permanent basis.

-D-Generation X and Mike Tyson come out.  Triple H gloats about winning the European title from Owen on last week’s show and he says that even though Chyna will be handcuffed at ringside that won’t change the outcome of their match.  There is a really slutty older woman near the front row that is a big DX fan and Shawn Michaels makes fun of her.  Michaels compares the Austin-McMahon fight to a catfight and says he does not care about what McMahon thinks of him.  Michaels says if Austin wants to win the WWF title he has to go through the greatest champion in history and he also has to deal with Tyson, who says he will knock Austin out if he messes with him.  Michaels says that after WrestleMania D-Generation X will rule forever….forever….Solid promo, but it repeated all of the same talking points we’ve heard for weeks.  1 for 6

-Gennifer Flowers urges viewers to come out of the closet and announce that they are WWF fans.

-The announcers discuss the wicked chair shot Ken Shamrock took at the hands of the Rock last week.  Ross says that at WrestleMania if the Rock is disqualified he will lose the Intercontinental title.

-Faarooq beats Chainz by disqualification when the Rock interferes at 3:36:

Faarooq chooses to fight his own battle without the Nation’s help and he does not have much to worry about as Chainz gets the jobber entrance.  The Rock decides to wander out despite Faarooq’s instructions with a chair and he gets more heat than anyone on the show, as fans pelt him with garbage as he comes down the ramp.  Faarooq has the match in hand after a spinebuster, but the Rock runs into the ring with a chair to hit Chainz.  Faarooq tells him not to do so and prepares for a Dominator, but the Rock knocks him out with the chair, seemingly aiming for Chainz and misses.  Was he really aiming for Faarooq, though?  Both of these guys tried, but the Rock had five times more heat than both of them combined and Faarooq loved the chinlocks in this match.  Rating:  ¾* (1 for 7)

-A video package recaps the Bradshaw-Barry Windham feud.

-Bradshaw beats Barry Windham (w/Jim Cornette) with a school boy at 3:05:

The Rock N’ Roll Express occupy seats near the front row for this match, which is puzzling because they are talent so they should just be able to walk out and watch the match by the entrance at the very least.  In the old days this would be perfect midcard fodder for WrestleMania, but the feud has largely been ignored for the last few weeks and they must have felt the need to just blow it off here.  Windham actually takes off his entrance gear for this one, so you know it’s important.  The Express threaten to come over the guardrail after Cornette and that distracts Windham, enabling Bradshaw to win in the weakest way possible.  After the match, the New Midnight Express run down and help Windham do a small beatdown on Bradshaw before the Rock N’ Roll Express make the save.  I would have given this a point, but the ending was terrible.  Rating:  *½ (1 for 8)

-Muhammad Ali’s guest referee performance at WrestleMania I is the M&M WrestleMania Millennium Moment.

-D-Generation X and Mike Tyson are shown conversing and having fun in the locker room.  The announcers hype DX’s public workout in Times Square on Thursday.

-Sable is awarded a plaque for making the January 1997 edition of RAW magazine the highest selling ever.  Sunny is supposed to get one as well, but is “under the weather,” and the crowd boos that out of the building, which makes me wonder who the more popular “diva” at this time was among the fan base.  It’s like the Shawn Michaels-Bret Hart feud among fans, in that you favored one over the other.  I came down on the side of Bret and Sunny.  Marc Mero says he is going to let Sable have her moment and leaves, but that lets Luna Vachon run down and nail Sable with her plaque and rip her dress.  This segment was notable at the time because it exposed Vince Russo and “Vic Venom” as the same person.  Venom was a smarkish writer that wrote columns for WWF and RAW Magazine and had a short-lived newsletter along the lines of the Wrestling Observer.  Russo was the WWF Magazine editor at the time and while people have problems with elements of his booking, his editing made WWF Magazine a great read in the mid-1990s.  In fact, Russo wrote a column in WWF magazine after this where he blasted fans for fooling them with the Venom character, which I swear was what informed the “It was me all along!” part of the Higher Power angle of 1999.  2 for 9

-Non-Title Match:  Steve Austin beat The Rock (Intercontinental Champion w/The Nation of Domination) with the Stone Cold Stunner at 8:25 shown:

Somewhat interesting that the main event of WrestleMania XV is the last RAW match before WrestleMania XIV.  Austin shows that the little things can work a crowd as he flips the Rock off when granting a clean break in the corner.  This is a surprisingly bland and barely average match, with lots of stalling and deliberate strikes.  Austin actually rolls out of the way of the People’s Elbow, something that rarely happened, and launches a comeback to finish off the Rock.  Since this still got a good crowd reaction I will give this a point, but it is probably the worst Austin-Rock match that I remember seeing.  Rating:  ** (3 for 10)

-After the match, D-Generation X comes out and Michaels tells Austin that he will beat him at WrestleMania.  Michaels feigns coming into the ring to confront Austin, but Triple H convinces Michaels not to do it as we go off the air.

The Final Report Card:  On my scale, this is one of the worst RAW episodes in a while.  It is not that the angles are not hot, but most of them have run out of steam without having a match take place, so this show was everyone treading water before WrestleMania.  The only one where that does not apply, the Bradshaw-Windham angle, had an awful finish on this show too, but that is what I have come to expect from the NWA angle.

Here is our finalized WrestleMania XIV card:

*WWF Championship Match:  Shawn Michaels (Champion) vs. Steve Austin with Mike Tyson as guest enforcer

*Intercontinental Championship Match:  The Rock (Champion) vs. Ken Shamrock and if the Rock is disqualified he loses the title

*WWF Tag Team Championship Dumpster Match:  The New Age Outlaws (Champions) vs. Cactus Jack & Chainsaw Charlie

*European Championship Match:  Triple H (Champion) vs. Owen Hart with Chyna handcuffed at ringside

*Mixed Tag Team Match:  Marc Mero & Sable vs. The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust & Luna Vachon

*WWF Light Heavyweight Championship Match:  Taka Michinoku (Champion) vs. Aguila

*15 Team Tag Team Battle Royal

Monday Night War Rating:  3.6 (vs. 4.6 for Nitro)

Show Evaluation:  Thumbs Down