The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 07.25.94
I’ve got six Clashes left, and the only one I’ve actually seen before is the infamous “reviving elbow” one, so that’ll take me a little while to catch up. Just in case you were checking every day and waiting.
Taped from Bushkill, PA
Your hosts are Jim Ross & Randy Savage
Nikolai Volkoff v. Tatanka
At stake here is a $10,000 bet that Tatanka made with Dibiase, although apparently the result leaked on Reddit so he’ll only make like $5 on it. Volkoff chokes him out in the corner and on the ropes and on a plane and in a train, Sam I Am. And then we switch to the stomping, before Tatanka mounts a comeback with a dropkick to put Volkoff on the floor. Back in, Volkoff retains control with, yes, you guessed it, more stomping. Tatanka comes back with chops and finishes with a small package at 6:13. WEAK SAUCE. ½* Randy Savage demands that Dibiase pay out the 10 grand, and Tatanka throws out a challenge to Lex Luger, who comes out and does not deny any involvement with Dibiase.
The Headshrinkers v. Barry Hardy & some other geek
Samu hits the guy with a DDT from the middle rope and the Shrinkers double-team him in the corner as the announcers continue talking up a Heavenly Bodies feud that never materialized. Despite being babyface champions for a couple of months now, the Shrinkers are still totally acting like heels. Fatu finishes with the flying splash at 3:48.
Jim Neidhart v. Jim Powers
I have no idea how Powers even can move with that physique. Neidhart throws him around the ring while Owen rants to the camera, and a backdrop suplex gets two. Powerslam and a camel clutch that looks like it was supposed to be a dragon sleeper of some kind finishes at 3:00. Why bother giving Neidhart squashes? He was just there as Owen’s heavy anyway.
Alundra Blayze joins us to discuss her open challenge, and she’s finished with Luna Vachon. I didn’t even know she had started with her. She’s more concerned with Bull Nakano next week, but Luna storms out and claims responsibility for bringing her in to challenge.
Meanwhile, a mobster has a stereotypical Italian restaurant owner whacked because he really wants to watch RAW. Apparently the Tatanka v. Volkoff and Headshrinkers matches didn’t cover the spectrum of offending ALL the minorities watching and they wanted to cover their bases.
Yokozuna v. Adam Bomb
This is fresh off Bomb’s babyface turn, and what better way to launch a new career than by getting squashed by Yokozuna? Bomb manages to overpower Yoko and put him on the floor, and we take a break. I will take the opportunity to once again note that “Adam Bomb” is a great cheesy gimmick name and was kind of wasted of Bryan Clark. Back with Yoko beating him down to take over and going to the Vulcan nerve pinch, but Bomb fights out of it and dodges a corner splash. Bomb comes back with a DDT and goes up with the flying clothesline, but Kwang trips him up and Bomb gets distracted and counted out at 10:25. There are some shit finishes tonight. Match was a lot better than I would have guessed going in, though. ** I don’t recall if I ever had the honor of sitting through Kwang v. Adam Bomb at a house show around this time, but it seems like something that would have happened to me.
Duke Droese v. Dwayne Gill
They’re STILL going on about how inappropriate it is to use garbage cans and what a bad person Lawler is for doing so. Droese gets a press slam and suplex, and a powerslam. The TRASH COMPACTOR finishes at 2:30.
Next week: Alundra Blayze v. Bull Nakano and Shawn Michaels v Razor Ramon! That can’t possibly suck.
Meanwhile, a mobster has a stereotypical Italian restaurant owner whacked because he really wants to watch RAW.
ReplyDeleteSalvatore Sincere?
this was around the time Hulk testified. It's weird cause the Bash was the night before this show aired, iirc.
ReplyDeleteThe fans saw the Hulk Hogan character reassert itself as Mr. Bollea left
the courthouse. Before stepping into an airport taxi en route to a
special cable television event this weekend, he smiled, pointed into the
camera lenses and said, "Better watch the Pay Per View this Sunday,
brother!"
I found it weird too that the tv product seemed more focused on Neidhart rather than Owen. One would assume that Neidhart was a guy they prefer pushing over Owen or maybe WWF are innocent from such retarded booking because Owen's leg was hurt around this time so maybe this was WWF's way of keeping Owen on tv while he rested his injury.
ReplyDeleteBryan Clark was awesome. Only reason he never got over in WWF because he was never pushed.
ReplyDeleteHe did get over and he was pushed, but he was terrible so they never pulled the trigger on him.
ReplyDeleteThen again there were a lot of guys pushed ahead of him in 1995 who were just as bad with no upside like Clark either.
Clark was pissed at McMahon's failed promises for a real push and just left in 95. He sat out until wrath in 97
ReplyDeleteClark's best in-ring work was as a babyface in the WWF but my favorite run of his was Fall 1997 when he and Mortis got a month-or-two push in WCW.
ReplyDeleteBret/Neidhart was the house show pairing (I saw them in October 94) so they haf to give Anvil a couple TV wins, ya figure.
ReplyDeleteJim Powers challenged Shane Douglas for the ECW "World" Title on an episode of Hardcore TV a little later in 1994. Theses episodes of Hardcore TV crack me up, Shane "feuds" with Ric Flair while defending against Jim Powers, Chad Austin, and a bunch of other nobodies. I really enjoy the stuff with Public Enemy, Cactus Jack and some of the others, but Shane Douglas as the top guy is just laughable.
ReplyDeleteIt was either Shane or The Sandman or Sabu.
ReplyDeleteConsidering those other 2 clowns could barely string 3 moves together without exposing the biz, i can't blame Paul E too much for keeping the belt on The Franchise.
I think the mythical feud with Flair just kills it for me. He has a series of matches with Ron Simmons, which is fine, but the promos constantly focused on Flair. Just Heyman creating hype for something that would never be paid off, I guess.
ReplyDeleteYeah, he had some surprising moves for someone who should have been an immobile slug, given his size & physique. He was never a GREAT worker in the WWF, but he was usually at LEAST "average" or even above-average as an in-ring talent until he stopped giving a shit in his latter WCW days (oddly, when he was in KroniK and arguably at his most popular).
ReplyDeleteECW was still in a working relationship with WCW at the time wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteI think Paul E believed there was a chance of a Ric Flair appearance if they built it up enough.
The match at MSG for that particular tour (The HART Attack Tour, har har) sucked. Bret's notorious for dogging it, but Anvil brought NOTHING.
ReplyDeletePer Wiki
ReplyDelete"The WWF had planned on bringing in Bertha Faye to feud with Nakano while Blayze got plastic surgery on her nose and breasts, but Nakano was found in possession of cocaine and quickly fired from the company."
I'm popping a couple of weird boners at the idea of all of that.
Fucking cocaine. Bull Nakano was great in WWF in 1994, sadly before my time as a fan but thanks to the magic of Youtube I can re-discover how great she was. Japanese women's wrestling as a whole is pretty great. The outfits and glam are great and the wrestling is even greater.
ReplyDeleteI thought when he was in Kronik he was pretty much finished as a worker because injuries had finally caught up to him so he couldn't do the stuff that made him unique.
ReplyDeleteEveryone kills Douglas, but I always thought the was just fine early in his career. It wasn't until he started getting out of shape that I really soured on him.
ReplyDeleteEh, he was never pushed. He was a JTTS guy who got beat by other JTTS guys. It seemed like they were going to push him because announcers were pushing him pretty hard, but never came to fruition.
ReplyDeleteHe was pretty good in the WWF, but I thought was an even better worker in WCW.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Bret dogging it, I remember one Keller within the same week, criticized both Hart for dogging it at house shows and Flair for going all out at house shows. I mean, I'm sure there's a happy medium somewhere, but I thought that was just him looking for reasons to knock guys.
ReplyDeleteIt's surprising they never actually did Bret/Neidhart on tv. It could have been built up simply by video packages of their history together and I'm sure would have done a decent rating.
ReplyDeleteMan, Lawler must have really pissed USA off with that stunt a couple weeks prior.
ReplyDeleteWhen Keller goes to houseshows he expects a show full of ** matches!
ReplyDeleteand it also gave us this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkCo8a7tgPw
ReplyDelete....
I found it funny that the more he improved on the mic, the worse he got in the ring.
ReplyDeleteand they also had several tag team matches (with Bret Hart tagging with the Bulldog), so yes, it made sense to at least give Neidhart some exposure as an active wrestler again.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't following ECW that closely as it was going on, so I have to wonder: Did he just get lazy, because he knew he could, or did he have a lot of injuries that caught up to him?
ReplyDeleteI haven't been a Torch subscriber in a long time, but if memory serves, Keller was never particularly fond of either guy.
ReplyDeleteThink it was mostly injures and the fact his conditioning went to hell didn't help either.
ReplyDeleteKeller the contrarian.
ReplyDeleteBob Holly just got a boner.
ReplyDeleteThis should have probably been discussed the Raw after WMX, but it always irked me that they were wasting Yoko like this. Dude was champion for like a year, you'd think in kayfabe terms he would have asked for his title rematch clause. Not only that, but Yoko would also have issue with Bret being champion because Bret beat him on a fluke when Yoko had that match won.
ReplyDeleteSeems like it was a no-brainer for the KotR. They do the rematch and Bret goes over clean. They can still do the Owen/Neidhart shenanigans after the match.
ReplyDeleteExactly I always felt they should have done another Bret-Yoko match to prove his WMX win wasn't a fluke.
ReplyDeleteAnd I never got the whole Bret/Diesel match at KOTR anyway as Diesel was a JTTS guy before winning the IC title. They should have pushed him up more slowly up the card, whereas Bret could have worked with Yoko or Luger at the event.
We call that "The Scott Steiner Effect".
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing as he got bigger and bigger, Vince lost interest in using him. At this point, he definitely should have been paired with someone for a tag team. It took a year or so for them to do that with Owen.
ReplyDeleteDid they do any Bret-Yoko house show matches around this time? Weren't they doing some blow-offs to feuds that way around this time? I remember Tatanka-IRS was built on TV, but the matches were on house shows. I think they also did the same with Yoko and Typhoon, after Earthquake left.
ReplyDeleteI think they did do some Bret/Yoko cage matches, but not sure if that was '93 or '94.
ReplyDeleteand of course, the other half of that "HART attack tour" double main event... Taker/Yoko in a casket match... Ya know, cause Yoko is 600 lbs and scared to death of caskets.... I wonder if they'd like to have THAT one back..
ReplyDelete