The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 06.06.94
As requested, here’s the link for this show:
http://network.wwe.com/video/v32464003
Taped from Youngstown, OH
Your hosts are Vince McMahon & Randy Savage
Weird thing of the week: I switched to the XBone for my WWE Network viewing tonight, and it presents the RAW archives in chronological order rather than reverse order like the PS3 does. Just one of those odd choices developers make, I guess. The other weird thing is that colors are very bright and almost blown out on the Xbox, which makes the neon bodysuit era a nightmare to watch.
Lumberjack King of the Ring Qualifier: Tatanka v. Crush
Crush quickly beats on Tatanka and tosses him, and the heels toss him back in for two. Crush pounds away and goes to a chinlock in record time, before getting serious with a bodyslam. A knee misses and the fake crowd goes crazy! They can edit out music but can’t edit out their god-awful canned heat from 20 years ago? Tatanka dropkicks him out and gets two as we take a break. Back with Tatanka holding an armbar as Vince is still going on about how Crush can win multiple stuff in the same night. He hasn’t even qualified yet! Geez, I hope Vince’s penchant for excitedly overpromising stuff doesn’t come back to bite him years later. So now it’s Crush with the armbar as the lumberjacks are far more interested in the match than the crowd is. Crush is just armbarring the shit out of Tatanka and in fact appears to be going for a kimura, but Tatanka is as bored of this match as I am and decides to make the comeback for the hell out of it The CHOP OF DOOM gets two, but Crush puts him down with an atomic drop for two. And then, yes, it’s ARMBAR TIME. And not just any armbar, but the kind of armbar where both guys lay on the mat like journeymen from 1909. So again Tatanka makes the comeback and we TAKE ANOTHER FUCKING BREAK?! Tatanka fights back with chops, but Crush puts him down for a fistdrop that gets two. And now Crush with the facelock, before tossing Tatanka out for a beating from the heels. Back in, that gets two for Crush. And then Crush goes back to the facelock AGAIN. Vince notes that it’s a “romp ‘em stomp ‘em” match, and I’m not 100% sure if that translates as good or bad in his mind. Crush with a suplex for two, but Tatanka tosses him into the babyfaces and he promptly KICKS THEIR ASSES. That’s kind of hilarious. So with the good guys unable to beat on the heel with a 10 on 1 advantage, Lex Luger runs out from the dressing room, knocks Crush out with the loaded forearm, and Tatanka gets the pin at 25:00. Yes, with commercials, they gave this nearly half an hour! So it was incredibly boring, made the babyfaces look like pussies, and Tatanka only won because Lex Luger cheated on his behalf. Awesome. *1/2
King of the Ring Report with another video sent in by Roddy Piper in lieu of actually appearing on the show.
Bam Bam Bigelow v. John Paul
Bigelow misses a splash and Paul goes to the arm as the announcers continue burying the Flintstones movie for the second week in a row for some reason. A quick check reveals that Flintstones had a domestic gross of $140M and a worldwide of $350M (which would equate to about $700M today), which means that it made more profit than all of the WWE movie releases, COMBINED. So retroactively suck it, 1994 Vince. Bammer wins with a senton at 2:30.
Earlier today, WWF wrestlers have a tug of war with the army to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day. And they don’t even do the job for them!
The King’s Court with “Roddy Piper”. Yeah, it’s the kid who does the Piper impression, and Vince is SHOCKED at the bait-and-switch here. This is almost as bad as promising tripled TV rights fees to Wall Street! The kid does a funny impression for a 30 second bit, but this goes WAY too long, as “Piper” is supposedly a girlish coward.
Razor Ramon v. Keith Davis
“Keith” looks suspiciously like a 17 year old Jeff Hardy. With a Vanilla Ice haircut! In fact I’m 99% sure that’s him. Ramon just destroys the young Willow and gives him no offense, finishing with a backdrop suplex and Razor’s Edge at 4:00. That was quite the squash.
Next week: The Quebecers get a rematch for the tag titles in their last WWF match for a long time! Also, Ted Dibiase promises that the Undertaker will be on Superstars this weekend.
Didn't Ramon face Hardy a year or two later and did give him some offense?
ReplyDeleteStill don't understand the obsession with protecting everyone especially when they didn't have any plans for half of these guys.
Boring Matches with babyfaces looking like pussies with a cheap win to boot? The prototype of today's action was 20 years ago, clearly.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see the response of the bloggers when the feature match in a few weeks is 1-2-3 Kid v. Nickel and Dime Volkoff
ReplyDeleteSome weird epidemic that WCW did all the time, too. As if house show business was doing so good with the non-finish/cheap finish protections for either company at this point.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think someone with a partially functioning brain wouldn't give two limited workers like Tatanka and Crush 25-minutes these days, unless the entire roster gets stuck in traffic or something.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it. They did face a couple of years later when Ramon was feuding with Goldust.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's Jeff. He talked about how Kid called him Ice in the locker room after the match, and that was his nickname as a jobber; also, I think he said Razor liked working with him because he'd never complain about taking bumps, like other jobbers.
ReplyDeleteI think in fact there's a story about how Razor liked working with him and at a couple points actually gave him some offense in future matches? Don't recall for sure though.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPQcuWzCSTM
ReplyDeleteA few weeks later, versus the Kid. And Jeff already gets a bunch of offense..!
I was more confused that the winner of THAT match got to be the #1 contender for the world title. I doubt they even made PWI's top 10 for that month.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I didn't mind it as Crush was one of my favorites, so while I was sad Crush didn't win, he at least got to look strong and stuff. Looking back on it though, I'm not sure of it was a case of Adams being a dick to deal with backstage because everytime he did the job, the match finish was always overbooked that protected him.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if, during this period, if a person complained about doing a job, they were willing to create some sort of finish where he was somewhat protected? I mean, we know Vince had bigger things on his mind, so it isn't like he cared.
ReplyDeleteand with all the jobber matches they run, it gives them plenty of time to build a guy back up.
ReplyDeleteExactly, not really much need to protect the Barbarian. It's not going to main event ever so he can stand to do a job.
ReplyDeleteThat's a big plus of jobber matches, in my opinion. When you put a guy in there against jobbers several weeks in a row, fans know this guy is supposed to be at least kinda important. Plus, it gives fans the chance to become familiar with a guy's moveset. Razor is a good example of this, as he had a few moves that fans popped for, before even getting to the Edge.
ReplyDelete"So retroactively suck it, 1994 Vince."
ReplyDeleteThere's the Scott we all know and love! No homo.
I think there is an art to the jobber matches. The Road Warriors and Midnight Express were best at them. It's a time to showcase your stuff, but so many times guys just half-ass through it and go home.
ReplyDeleteHow did Jeff Hardy make it so far this early? If he's 17 here, either he just graduated or had already dropped out of high school. So, when the fuck did he start wrestling?
ReplyDeleteIt was an incredibly pleasant surprise that Kid won though. Face vs Face matches were pretty rare at that point, so i was 100% sure that Volkoff was gonna find a way to win that one. Instead we got a near 5 star match, so yay!
ReplyDeleteItalian Stallion would bring Matt and Jeff to do TV jobs after seeing their backyard promotion, which later became OMEGA, iirc.
ReplyDeleteI think there was some bribery from Ted DiBiase involved.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely. For some guys, though, it was a chance to showcase their personality and moveset, and it was fantastic. Mr. Perfect is another guy who squash matches were invented for. He was well-known for his selling, but obviously couldn't sell like that for a jobber. So, in the squash matches he got to really show off his arrogant side, to go along with his neck snap thing (which I loved, by the way), and everything else he did.
ReplyDeleteI think they should have done Kid v IRS instead in the battle of the KOTR semi finalists as that would've easily explained the winner going on to challenge the champion plus could have still gotten DiBiase involved too.
ReplyDeleteJust watched a snippet of a shoot with Italian Stallion. Seems to be a lot of bad blood there. No idea he ran a school either.
ReplyDeleteThere's a good chance he molested the Hardy Boyz.
ReplyDeleteWho would hace thought that between Razor Ramon and Keith Davis it was Davis the one who became WWE Champion.
ReplyDeleteNot exactly where I was expecting this to go; however, I do find the whole thing fascinating. Strange that I never heard any of this before.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Vince tried to get involved with the Production of the Flintstones in someway, so when he was turned down, this is what you got.
ReplyDeleteWithout that protection, though, how does the Barbarian get that world title match against Ron Simmons?
ReplyDeleteWell this just went to a really dark place.
ReplyDeleteMind BLOWN.
ReplyDeleteMoney In The Bank!
ReplyDeleteIf you are feeding Barbarian to your world champion then why would he be doing jobs leading up to the match? Secondly, no one bought Barbarian as a title contender anyway, so doing a job wouldn't change anything.
ReplyDeleteBUT! He had Cactus Jack as his manager! He was going to be huge!
ReplyDeleteI can't remember where I heard, but in someone's shoot they said Stallion was ripping them off and they couldn't do anything about it or he'd stop getting them booked all together. I know I heard that, not sure where though. But never rule out molestation.
ReplyDeleteI think Hall talked about it on a podcast somewhere. Or Jeff talks about it on a DVD. Hall definitely liked him and thought he had something.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny but when the idea of jobber matches comes up I immediately think of Razor Ramon. I guess he was considered to be too green to be working main events so early but as a kid he beat the shit out of a couple of jobbers and I thought he could beat anyone.
ReplyDeleteVince probably didn't understand the humor of dinosaurs acting as household appliances. Anything Vince doesn't get is automatically garbage.
ReplyDeleteRipping them off financially for their bookings seems to be the common story passed around. I think they finally caught on and went behind his back to make sure they weren't getting dicked.
ReplyDeleteVince probably hadn't caught up to prehistoric times yet so he didn't get the humour.
ReplyDeleteI hate Roddy Piper.
ReplyDelete