Pre-show notes:
– Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network.
– 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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And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for August 12, 1996.
Worst: Jerry Lawler Reaches His Next Form
For years, I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact moment when Jerry “The King” Lawler stopped being a cheesy but vehemently heel color commentator, and became a whoopee cushion of a man who hopped up and down in place and made Tex Avery wolf eyes whenever tits were near. I can’t say this is the moment, but it’s certainly on the list.
Sunny brings out Faarooq Asaad for his Raw debut against Skip of the Bodydonnas. As she gets in the ring, Lawler starts going, “wow! Look at Sunny!” They cut to an extreme closeup of his face (pictured) as he looks at her like Ralphie from A Christmas Story might look at a Red Ryder B.B. gun. Now, before this, Lawler had been smashing paintings over the Ultimate Warrior’s head and piledriving Aldo Montoya as a way to emphasize Jake Roberts’ alcoholism. He’d notice beautiful women, but he wouldn’t lose his mind over them. He even agreed with Jim Cornette that Sable was “a dog.” But now here he is like Saul seeing the light on the road to f*cking Damascus because Sunny promised him full-frontal on Raw.
He spends the entire match saying that Sunny told him that tonight we’d see “the naked truth,” and that it would be better than the movie Striptease. He says this a few times. “Hey, you know that movie Striptease?” Tonight on the damn USA Network we’re gonna have more nudity than the movie about getting naked, I SWEAR TO GOD.
The match itself is just Faarooq squashing poor Chris Candido, and debuting The Dominator. If you aren’t familiar with The Dominator, it sits next to the Alabama Slam on the list of 90s finishes veterans used to brutalize the sh*t out of people who’d pissed them off. I don’t know if Candido could read the writing on the wall here, but I can’t imagine it being written more clearly than, “WE SEPARATED YOUR POPULAR GIRLFRIEND FROM YOU SO WE COULD HAVE HER STAND HER AND CLAP WHILE YOU GET SQUASHED BY AN IMPORTANT GUY.”
Worst: He’s Named Crush Because When He Shows Up, Your Hopes That It’ll Be A Good Match Are Crushed
If you want to know how bad this match is, look at the picture. This is the moment before the finish. Notice how nobody in the crowd is looking at it?
Let’s all give a warm welcome back to CRUSH, the former Demolition member and brah salesman who hasn’t been around because he’s kinda sorta been getting sent to jail for steroids and gun possession. He’s back with an “I was arrested for steroids and gun possession” gimmick, although they make sure to call the steroids “drugs” so you think he’s slinging crack or something and isn’t just a wrestler.
He engages in 8 minutes of the most brain-damaging 1996 WWF action you’ve ever seen. When I say it damages your brain, I mean it may bore you so severely that you forget how to breathe and it starts f*cking Dino Damaging your brain. If you haven’t seen the match, imagine Savio Vega sitting down in the middle of the ring and Crush standing over him, pinching him in the neck. Imagine that this lasts for 8 MINUTES. Entire sections of the crowd lose interest and simply wander off-screen, and I’m pretty sure I saw a dude morph into a skeleton a la Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
As an aside, this was one of (if not the) lowest-rated episode of Raw ever, and an early motivator for the company to pull its head out of the ass of the “New Generation” and jam it back up something people wanted to watch. As a reminder, this is the go-home Raw for SummerSlam ’96, a show which gives Savio Vega 13 minutes and puts Stone Cold Steve Austin on the pre-show.
Worst: Ahmed Johnson, The Naked Truth
Kevin Kelly catches up with Ahmed Johnson in his home, which appears to be a school hallway. Ahmed is dressed like Ken from Street Fighter II and explains his kidney injury, saying … well, I’m not totally sure what he’s saying. It’s Ahmed Johnson. Don’t think I’m being a dick, even the WWE Network closed captioning guy has no idea.
BTW, In Case You Thought This Episode Would Feature Full-Frontal Nudity…
About halfway through the episode, we get the payoff for “the naked truth,” and it’s just her behind a screen pretending to take off bathing suits and saying she’s gonna wear a bikini during the bikini-themed SummerSlam pre-show. For real. I say “pretending to take off bathing suits” because she’s supposed to be naked, but you can straight-up see she’s not, unless she’s got straps build into her spine and a natural quad-boob.
Not to spoil it for you, but the “bikini blastoff” at SummerSlam is an above-ground pool they set up backstage at the Gund Arena in Cleveland and covered in sand. No, seriously. Sunny’s big moment is “sunbathing” on her stomach (indoors, beside an above-ground pool) and getting upset when Todd Pettengill accidentally kicks sand on her. That’s it. WWF COULDN’T EVEN GET MASTURBATING RIGHT.
Worst: Who (Booked This Crap?)
The next match in this lucid nightmare of a wrestling show is The Godwinns vs. T.L. Hopper, wrestling plumber, and his tag team partner WHO. The wrestler with the unlikely name of Who is the guy on the right in the yellow trunks who looks like he belongs on a Jiraiya sweatshirt from Massive. It’s Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, by the way.
If you’re wondering why there’s a wrestler named “Who,” it’s so the two old men on commentary could make already 40-year old Abbott & Costello jokes during matches. That’s it. They put a 2-time Tag Team Champion in a flea market lucha mask and way-too-small Hulk Hogan panties so Vince could say, “Who is in the ring,” and Lawler could say, “Who?”
These people are in control of the thing you love.
As you might’ve guessed, 6 minutes of hillbillies wrestling a plumber and a joke from the Dead Sea Scrolls doesn’t light the wrestling world on fire. Gorilla Monsoon shows up picture-in-picture to vacate the Intercontinental Championship, and it’s so unimportant that they cut away from it to call the finish of the match, then go back to him. I love the idea that like 4 minutes into the tag match, the production team forgot a match was happening and just put up the Gorilla footage.
Best: Bret Hart Is Not In A Hurry To Come Back
One of the lone highlights of the episode is Mr. Perfect going on a damn cruise to check in with Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart, who is enjoying his post-“what the f*ck was that” WrestleMania 12 hiatus. Bret says he’s not ready to make a decision on his future yet, and that he’s enjoying hanging out on cruises with people who think he’s cool. It’s amazing. Kevin Kelly had to go to Ahmed Johnson’s middle school house and interview him while he wore a bathrobe, and Mr. Perfect got to go on a cruise.
This becomes extra great when you juxtapose it with Bret’s old tag team partner being literally crammed into WHO in the previous segment. Why would he come back? The only thing I could think of is to feud with the hottest act in wrestling, have one of the best under-the-radar matches of all-time at Survivor Series and put over the new guy with the best-executed double-turn in wrestling history in one of the top 2 or 3 best WrestleMania matches ever.
I mean, that could work.
Best/Worst: Owen Hart Vs. Shawn Michaels’ Ego
Our final match of the week is Owen Hart vs. Shawn Michaels, which should be great, but is just Shawn at the peak of his impossible-to-love, only-shining-star-in-the-World-Wrestling-Federation babyface thing. If it happened on pay-per-view, Shawn would give it his all. If he happened on Raw, Shawn would go through the motions and hit his spots in the same order and give you something that was head and shoulders better than the rest of the in-ring product, but nothing to get excited about. Owen was the kind of guy who was a Master Craftsman in the ring, but didn’t necessarily have his brother Bret’s ability to raise up a scenario that didn’t deserve to be special and make it so.
The crowd’s mostly gone at this point, but they sound like a million people because HOORAY FOR EPISODES ON TAPE. Vader runs out and Shawn dropkicks him off the apron, dodges an Owen charge and hits him with Sweet Sternum Music, pictured above. That looked terrible, so Owen just no-sells it, gets back up to his feet and eats Sweet Chin Music proper for the loss. Vader beats him up after the match, but it’s cool because Shawn pinned Owen and is gonna spend the next six days making sure he doesn’t have to lose at SummerSlam.
I’m honestly surprised that they don’t go to commercial after it and come back to Shawn in a bathrobe, talking about how Vader burst both of his kidneys but he’s gonna wrestle anyway, because he’s able to do what nobody else can and is Daddy’s Special Little Boy.
