What the World Was Watching: Monday Night Raw - May 11, 1998

by Logan Scisco

-A video package recaps Mick Foley becoming the number one contender to the WWF championship last week.

-Jim Ross and Michael Cole are doing commentary and they are live from Baltimore, Maryland.

-Vince McMahon walks out and announces that WWF Champion Steve Austin will be in tag team action tonight.  Dude Love comes out wearing a suit and glasses, carrying a copy of the Wall Street Journal, and rocking a suit.  Love cuts a funny promo about his identity, nearly causing McMahon to corpse, and hugs McMahon.  McMahon proceeds to announce that at Over the Edge, Gerald Brisco will be the guest timekeeper and Pat Patterson will be the guest ring announcer for the WWF title match.  The guest referee does not show, so McMahon goes to the back and then soon re-emerges in a referee shirt.  Fun segment to kick off tonight’s show.  1 for 1

-Sable is shown arriving at the arena and she blows off Kevin Kelly.

-Footage is shown of D-Generation X reprising their “invasion” by going to WCW headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.  Security doesn’t quite know what to make of them.

-Al Snow is shown arriving backstage with Head.  He is carrying tickets and Kevin Kelly informs him that he is not entering the appropriate part of the arena.  Snow berates Head for not directing them to the right arena entrance.

-Opening Contest:  Vader beats Barry Windham (w/Jim Cornette & The New Midnight Express) with a Vader Bomb at 2:07:

And here I thought the Undertaker’s squash of Windham sent him away for good.  Vader wrestles this match in a t-shirt and is not moving very well, but he still manages to shrug off some of Windham’s strikes and NWA interference to win anyway.  After the match, Vader takes out the New Midnight Express.  This keeps Vader strong for a mask vs. mask match with Kane at Over the Edge.

-Steve Austin’s appearance on premiere of MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch is shown.  That show is how I knew wrestling was starting to become mainstream again.

-Austin’s Stone Cold Stunner on Pat Patterson on last week’s show is the Gastrol GTX Slam of the Week.

-Austin is shown arriving in a vehicle backstage.  Kelly informs him about the roles of Brisco, Patterson, and McMahon in the title match at Over the Edge and how he has been booked in a tag match tonight.  Austin is not happy and goes looking for McMahon.

-Skull (w/8-Ball) beats Hawk (w/Animal & Sunny) with a small package after an illegal switch at 2:30:

Considering the participants, this isn’t bad as both men do some power moves and brawling until Hawk flying out of the ring on a shoulder thrust in the corner allows 8-Ball to switch places with Skull and chalk the win.

-A video package recaps DX’s altercation with law enforcement at CNN headquarters.  They appear to be quite popular with the average person there.

-A brief Edge vignette where it is announced that he’s the person of our dreams is shown.

-Bradshaw and Taka Michinoku are shown smoking cigars earlier in the day and Bradshaw gives Michinoku a driving lesson.  When they return to the arena they are attacked by Kaientai.

-Faarooq (w/Steve Blackman) beats “Double J” Jeff Jarrett (w/Tennessee Lee) via disqualification when the Nation of Domination interferes at 1:52:

Faarooq finally has some unique entrance music, but it just sounds like generic hip hop.  Blackman beats up Jarrett several times when he ends up outside of the ring and when Faarooq gets ready to finish Jarrett with a Dominator, the Nation interferes.  In the ensuing brawl, the Nation beats down Faarooq while Jarrett destroys Blackman with nunchucks.  You can’t say they aren’t trying with this Jarrett-Blackman feud and considering Blackman’s lack of mic skills, this is about as good as we were going to get.

-Call 815-734-1161 to get your Steve Austin “You Wanna Raise Hell?” t-shirt for $25 (plus $6 shipping & handling)!

-WWF Champion Steve Austin comes out and demands McMahon come out to tell him what is going on with his booking tonight.  McMahon appears on the Titantron with Patterson and Brisco and they refuse to give him any information.  Just a generic segment to continue the storytelling for tonight.  1 for 2

-A spliced together compilation of Val Venis’s vignettes are shown.

-Jerry “the King” Lawler comes out to do commentary for hour two.

-The next scheduled segment is the Marc Mero-Sable bout (or “public confrontation” if you prefer).  Sable gets on the mic and tells Mero that she didn’t think it would come to this and Mero responds by picking her up for a TKO and then setting her down.  Mero demands an apology for Sable trying to ruin his career, but Sable responds by giving him a low blow and a Sable bomb.  Jim Cornette’s 1997 Timeline shoot ranted about this segment and Steve Austin scrapped a planned program with Mero over it because he did not want to take offense from a guy who was just beaten by a woman.  That aside, this got a huge reaction from the crowd and was entertaining.  2 for 3

-The Undertaker comes out after Lawler based on Lawler’s interaction with Paul Bearer on last week’s show.  The lights go out before the Undertaker can Tombstone Lawler and Kane and Bearer walk out.  Bearer promises that next week he will prove that he is Kane’s father.  After Kane and Bearer go back to the locker room, the Undertaker Tombstones Lawler.  This shows why the Attitude Era was great because the Undertaker going after Lawler immediately after the Sable-Mero segment happened out of nowhere.  3 for 4

-Al Snow comes out of the crowd with Head to do commentary duties with Jim Ross.  Security, directed by Pat Patterson, removes Snow, who demands to see McMahon.

-DX delivers a “parting shot” to CNN headquarters by blowing it up (computer generated of course) with an artillery gun.  Live in the arena, DX comes out and X-Pac tells Eric Bischoff to suck it.  DX runs through their usual promo spots before Owen Hart appears and announces that “Enough is enough and it’s time for a change.”  Owen brings the Nation of Domination with him to fight DX.

-Chyna’s participation in last week’s eight person tag match is the 1-800-COLLECT Rewind segment.

-Jim Cornette replaces Lawler to do commentary for the rest of the show.

­-Non-Title Match:  Triple H (European Champion w/D-Generation X) wrestles Owen Hart (w/The Nation of Domination) to a no-contest at 7:07 shown:

Owen’s alliance with the Nation makes sense in storyline terms because he needed a crew to back him up against DX and their constant interference in his matches.  Owen, Kama Mustafa, and D-Lo Brown of the Nation are booked to face DX in a six man tag match for Over the Edge as well.  Chyna’s crotching of Owen on the top rope nearly sparks a brawl between the two factions and Commissioner Slaughter allegedly puts an end to the bout.  Hey Slaughter, why didn’t you just send everyone to back BEFORE the match like you usually do?  This is one of the reasons that running authority figure stories like this never work out from a logic perspective.  I thought they might give Owen a cheap win here since he has a new factional alignment, but it was not to be.  The match showed that the crowd was digging the early stages of the DX-Nation feud, though.  Rating:  **½ (4 for 5)

-Dustin Runnels comes out with his Goldust attire and tosses it into a barrel by the entrance.  He proceeds to set it on fire and then cuts a promo where he says that McMahon took his dignity away with the Goldust character.  McMahon was everyone’s favorite whipping boy at this time.  A storyboard for him would have tons of lines all over the place.  Runnels says that the Goldust character is dead.  This had a lot of shock value at the time, but since the Goldust character was eventually reprised (like Jeff Jarrett ripping his country gimmick and going back to it) it didn’t matter in the long run.  4 for 6

-Handicap Match:  Kaientai (w/Yamaguchi-San) beats Terry Funk & 2 Cold Scorpio via disqualification when Taka Michinoku & Bradshaw interfere at 3:09:

I know it’s Terry Funk and all, but does it make a lot of sense to have him wrestle a week after he was “destroyed” by Mick Foley?  This is Kaientai’s in-ring RAW debut.  The height difference between Kaientai and their opponents always caused me to think that they didn’t have much of a chance at winning their matches.  The referee doesn’t care that Kaientai never tag and all stay in the ring at the same time and eventually Michinoku and Bradshaw run out to drive Kaientai off.  This is the first loss for Funk and Scorpio.  The match was not a conventional tag match and the flow of it was messy.  Rating:  * (4 for 7)

-McMahon is shown talking with Austin’s mystery tag team partner in the locker room, but we cannot see who it is.

-Al Snow tries to re-enter the arena, but security refuses him entry.

-“Stone Cold” Steve Austin & Vince McMahon (w/Gerald Brisco & Pat Patterson) wrestle The Rock & D-Lo Brown (w/The Nation of Domination) to a no contest when McMahon attacks Austin at 8:28:

McMahon names himself as Austin’s mystery partner making this a de facto handicap match.  Austin decides to wrestle it like No Mercy on the N64 by hitting anything that moves, including Brisco and Patterson.  Instead of giving a hot tag to McMahon after avoiding a Lo Down, Austin gives McMahon the bird.  Austin gives Brown a Stunner, but the Rock breaks that up and McMahon clotheslines Austin.  Brisco and Patterson join in the beat down to end this match, which did a great job sustaining heat.  **½ (5 for 7)

-After the bell, Austin beats back McMahon and the stooges only to have Dude Love run in and tackle him.  However, Dustin Runnels and D-Generation X run into the ring to brawl with Love and the Nation and the crowd’s loud reaction to all of this plays us out.

The Final Report Card:  RAW continues its streak of having lots of wild and unpredictable action as Austin gets held from some unlikely sources to beat back Dude Love and the Nation of Domination at the end of the show and the Undertaker destroyed Jerry Lawler.  D-Generation X’s “invasion” of WCW headquarters was pretty funny, although it was nowhere near their “invasion” of the WCW card in Norfolk, Virginia prior to this show.  The deck has been stacked against Austin for Over the Edge and the rest of that card is starting to come together with Vader being booked against Kane, DX fighting the Nation, and the Rock defending the Intercontinental title against Faarooq.  Excellent storytelling this week in all of the big angles and the crowd’s reactions throughout the show are a testament to that.

Monday Night War Rating:  4.3 (vs.4.3 for Nitro)

Show Evaluation:  Thumbs Up