Pre-show notes:
– Click here to watch the July 29 episode on WWE Network, and here to watch August 5.
– You can read about previous episodes on the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag page. As a reminder, we coordinate these columns with the Best and Worst of Nitro.
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Up first, let’s check in with The Ruler Of The World, who is not doing a very good job:
The Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for July 29, 1996:
Worst: 1 Minute In And This Already Doesn’t Make Sense
Sid wrestles the Chris Hero version of Bradshaw. After about 40 seconds of action, Sid chokeslams him, and Bradshaw’s down for the count. Instead of pinning him, Sid acts like a video game character who can’t figure out which button makes him focus on his opponent and just does this semi-circle around the ring, doing nothing. After a while, Bradshaw simply gets up, goes to his corner, grabs his rope and cowbell and attacks Sid for the DQ. That’s it. There’s not a pinfall attempt or any transition, it’s just a move, inactivity and a swing of a cowboy accessory.
Of course, that’s followed by Sid brushing off a heel double-team, Sidding up and powerbombing Bradshaw and Uncle Zeb. It makes you wonder why that couldn’t just be the finish, but after 1,160 episodes of Raw I should know that WWE Superstars gotta be protected. If they get browbeaten in less than a minute and easily defeated in a 2-on-1 attack where they have weapons that’s fine, as long as somebody doesn’t lay across them for 3 seconds in any official capacity! We care about STATS in the World Wrestling Federation! The worldwide leader in STATS.
Best: #RelationshipGoals
Get to know “Faarooq Asaad,” a futuristic gladiator from a world of too many vowels, sent here in a Nerf helmet to nerf Ahmed Johnson. Here he is cutting a surprisingly good promo that has nothing to do with his gimmick, saying he’s gonna show Ahmed how they “used to fight,” and how at SummerSlam he’s gonna be 15 pounds heavier, and it’s all gonna be gold. No idea why he’s dressed like an extra from Rollergames.
The funny part is that he’s already beaten Ahmed so badly it ruptured a kidney, so the SummerSlam match isn’t happening. It doesn’t actually happen until the 1997 Royal Rumble, and even THAT ends in a garbage DQ. Faarooq becomes a militant separatist and gets pushed out of the group by his second-in-command, a charismatic, half-Samoan guy in a $500 shirt. Can’t remember his name. Ahmed feuds with them until WWE realizes they’ve been eating a spoiled sandwich for a year and fire him. Nobody wins. Hooray!
Best/Worst: Speaking Of Garbage
We’re still two weeks out from SummerSlam ’96, so WWF thinks Vader’s still winning the WWF Championship. Here, they put him in the ring with Wildman Marc Mero and basically let him wreck him, Z-Man style, for 10 minutes. It’s bad if you like exciting wrestling, but great if you want to see Johnny B. Badd get boxed in the ears by a pissed-off fat dude. As always, Vince puts over Sable in subtle fashion: “Here comes the classy, sweet Sable!” In Vince’s toy box, Shawn Michaels is Sheriff Woody, and Sable is Buzz Lightyear. Sunny is Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl, and she’s about to get put out for donation.
I made sure to screencap Mero’s sunset flip attempt, because it’s easily the worst in human history. Look at that picture. That’s a sunset flip. He comes off the top, misses 450-pound Vader completely (somehow) and ends up Swanton Bombing an invisible man 3/4 of the way across the ring. Jim Cornette’s on commentary and yells “HE MISSED ‘IM!” for emphasis. Instead of, you know, getting up and doing something else, Mero just lies there holding his arms up and wiggling his fingers until Vader can come up with an organic reason to stumble backwards into it. Vader seriously shouldn’t just turned around and stomped his head like he was Mister Gone.
Worst: “This Guy Is A Violent Prisoner? Sure, That’s Worked Out Well For Us In The Past!”
In another of his spectacularly bad decisions as WWF President, Gorilla Monsoon lets an O.J. Simpson trial character holdover convince him to bring back (spoiler alert) Crush, former Demolition member and aggressive surfer. If you missed the “Kona Crush” era, imagine Lenny from Of Mice And Men in the body of Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake. Anyway, the story here is that Crush has spent time in prison, and Clarence Mason is convincing Gorilla that that’s all in the past. Wrestling prisoners always worked out so well for them!
Of course, the rub is that this is an actual thing that happened. Crush was arrested and jailed in 1995 for purchasing steroids and possession of an illegal handgun. 1996 Vince McMahon was IN LOVE with the idea that if you did something bad in real life, f*ck you, now it’s wrestling.
Worst: Sunny Was Doing Skype Shows In 1996 And I Missed It
Maybe I don’t know how the AOL Auditorium works.
Best: Owen Voices
Anyway, The British Bulldog wrestles Henry O. Godwinn, and it’s the 10-minute, chinlock-filled trash pile you’d expect. It’s worth sitting through, though, because the commentary is AMAZING. Owen Hart sits in with the team and spends the entire match trying to protect his Slammy Award from the “stink” of the Godwinns. He says the cast on his arm will only be on for “a few more months,” causing Vince to get all indignantly “Um Actually” about broken bones only needing six weeks to heal. They ask him about Bret Hart, leading to a sh*tty little brother diatribe about how Bret’s a quitter and a loser who couldn’t emotionally handle losing a match to Shawn Michaels. Owen mentions that if he ever lost to Shawn, he’d probably quit, too. Long story short, Owen Hart is the f*cking greatest.
Best: Cornette Face
Say what you will about Jim Cornette’s antiquated views on how wrestling should work, but the guy is a master of segments like this one, where he claims Jose Lothario’s gonna drift back into obscurity when Shawn Michaels loses the WWF Championship, and be off “picking whatever it is that grows” down in Mexico. When Shawn loses, Cornette says, nobody will care if Lothario “lives or stinking dies.” It’s a harsh, hateful rant that contains a nugget of truth, smashed up and spread thin by a horrible person. Those are the best heel promos. Cornette’s telling the truth, but he deserves to get punched in the face for doing so.
Meanwhile, Shawn Michaels hangs out backstage watching the promo on closed circuit television (or whatever) and gets Pearl Harbor’d by Mankind, who paralyzes him with some well-placed mouth-fingers. This is the start of a story that pays off in September at In Your House 10: Mind Games, in one of the very best WWF Championship matches with a terrible finish ever. JBL vs. Eddie Guerrero at Judgment Day 2004 may be the only one better.
Best: Jerry Lawler Coins A Jim Ross Phrase
This week’s main event is a match that’d sell out arenas in a few years: The Undertaker vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin. It’s still a Raw match, though, so it’s 12 minutes long and kinda boring, but Austin is finally within farting distance of really being Stone Cold, and it’s all uphill from here. The highlight of the match is Austin stomping Taker in the corner, and Jerry Lawler asking Vince McMahon if he’s ever heard of “stomping a mudhole and walking it dry.” Do your best to picture Jim Ross backstage engaged in black magic, Papa Shango’ing his redneck colloquialisms into Lawler’s brain.
The finish is once again terrible, with Mankind interfering, brawling to the back with the Undertaker and getting him counted out. Austin gets a cheap victory, but Taker wanders back to Tombstone Piledrive him on his totally fine, not-yet-Owen-Driver’d neck. Enjoy that functioning spinal column while it lasts, Steve.
Next Week: Aldo Montoya’s blood alcohol level goes up, and Ahmed Johnson gives himself the world’s most violent wedgie to win a battle royal.
The Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for August 5, 1996:
Best: Vince McMahon Thinks Alcohol Is Drano
Here’s what you need to know:
1. The “Portuguese Man O’ War” Aldo Montoya has become the protege of Jake “The Snake” Roberts and learned the DDT, which he used to upset Jerry Lawler on an episode of Superstars. I love the idea that you can’t figure out the mechanics of a DDT unless Jake takes you under his wing and explains them. “So I grab their head and then fall FORWARD? Oh I’ll never get this.”
2. Jerry Lawler is obsessed with the reality that Jake Roberts is a drug-addled alcoholic, and uses nearly every second of mic time on Raw to lob increasingly hateful alcoholism jokes at his expense. The problem is that Jake was actually going through drug and alcohol problems for real, so Lawler’s act came across as especially mean-spirited. A heel should be a heel and be the worst person in the world, but it felt less like a story and more like a company unable to differentiate real life from fantasy.
3. Lawler gets a rematch with Montoya on Raw and beats him easily with a piledriver, which surprises Vince despite Lawler being a legendary, heavily-decorated wrestling champion and Aldo Montoya being Justin Credible with Hulk Hogan’s underpants on his face.
After the match, Lawler sends a message to Jake by pouring Jim Beam down Montoya’s throat, which Vince sells like he’s dousing the kid with gasoline. “I CAN’T IMAGINE WHAT THAT MUST FEEL LIKE.” “HE DOESN’T EVEN DRINK!” All it’s missing is ECW general manager Tiffany popping in to tell Aldo Montoya to “loosen up” and get a life.
Worst: Woof
If that’s not enough to get you hype about this episode, how about a 15 minute Bodydonnas match with no heat and a f*ck finish?
The Bodydonnas were so dead in the water as a tag team at this point that WWF gave them a cross-dressing comedy manager and IMMEDIATELY DROPPED IT because it was STILL TOO BORING. Read that carefully. WWF gave them a wacky joke manager and couldn’t even muster the strength to run it into the ground. They ran Beaver Cleavage vignettes longer than Kloudi was around. So now you’ve surgically removed the only relevant thing about the team — Sunny — tried to get them over as babyfaces with a psychosexual stalker valet angle, then fed them to the wolves in these quarter-hour formula tags with pre-Crisis Al Snow and also-ran Marty Jannetty. It’s like trying to cook pizza rolls with a f*cking abacus.
There’s a multi-team tag team match coming up at SummerSlam ’96, so surprise! This ends with all the teams in that match running out for no reason and getting into a fight. 20 years later, we’re still doing that for every damn multi-team match. And, like always, none of these teams have identities beyond “one of the tag teams,” no story more important than “in an upcoming match,” and no momentum. Every bad Tom Pritchard splash should’ve been followed by Porky Pig bursting through the screen and announcing, “that’s all, folks.”
Worst: Shawn Michaels Is A Regular Guy Comma A Colossal Prick
Kevin Kelly sits down on a seaside veranda with Shawn Michaels to talk about how he’s a regular dude, and before that sentence even got started you knew the segment was f*cked. To show that he’s a regular joe who loves his fans, Shawn speaks about “The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels” in third person, drops a 1990s equivalent to “haters gonna hate” when asked about “his critics,” backhandedly says he can’t wait for Bret Hart to come back — we know how that turns out — and says that there’s nobody else in the WWF who can handle the schedule of being champion. He’s saying he should be champ because SCHEDULING. He also says there’s “only one shining star above all the rest” and it’s him, which is definitely something you say if you aren’t flipped upside down and jammed halfway up your own ass.
This would’ve been the greatest interview of all time if Vader had burst in wearing swim trunks and beaten the sh*t out of him.
Best? The Raw Invitational Battle Royal
This week’s main event is a battle royal featuring everybody who was at this set of tapings for a shot at the WWF Champion the night after SummerSlam. It’s a legitimately great field, with cats like Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Mankind, Goldust and Owen Hart all competing. It’s a vehicle to get Ahmed Johnson over, though, and it works spectacularly, save for the fact that Ahmed has ruptured his kidney. I don’t know when they taped the battle royal in relation to the Faarooq debut, but God bless this poor guy if his insides were exploding and he spent 20 minutes getting gingerly lifted to the top rope and then dropped by meandering heels.
The weird thing about the match is the pacing, which is unlike most battle royals. Here, everybody gets eliminated really fast, leaving four guys in the ring — Ahmed, Sid, Goldust and Austin. It stays like that for like 10 minutes, and when Sid and Austin gets tossed, it’s just Ahmed and Goldie for what feels like another 10. It’s one of those things that could’ve just been an “over the top rope challenge” with those four to begin with, and saved us the five minutes of suspension of disbelief regarding a Savio Vega win, or whatever. Oh, and there are 3 COMMERCIAL BREAKS.
The highlight is definitely the finish, which is Ahmed knocking Goldust over the top to the floor, going over the top himself and saving himself in a ridiculous, upside-down hang. Consult the picture for further information. Ahmed’s gear is desperately stretched pair of red trunks and 40 weirdly-placed elbow pads to begin with, so when he goes upside down, Jesus take the wheel. Maybe his kidney ruptured when he got spandex-burned from withers to brisket.
After the match, Faarooq shows up and they have a slap fight, which is so dainty you know it was prefaced by an agent pulling Ron Simmons to the side and saying, “try not to explode his spleen this time.” The stage is set for SummerSlam and the following Raw, except not at all! ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION.
