The Best And Worst Of WWF Monday Night Raw 9/30/96: Big Daddy Fool

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: Jim Ross made good on his promise that Razor Ramon would return to the WWF by bringing out the saddest facsimile soap-opera actor change ever. Also, the ECW invasion started but nobody knows what ECW is yet, so it’s gonna take a while. Other than that … I don’t know. Marc Mero is the Intercontinental Champion. Oh, and Jeff Jarrett’s music career wasn’t on the level, if you can believe it.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. After that, please enjoy the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for Sept. 30, 1996.

Best: The Authority

This week’s 2015 edition of Raw featured Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, so why shouldn’t the 1996 version feature Triple H cutting a boring promo? All this needs is a 10-year-old Seth Rollins in the background somewhere, being humiliated by someone.

Anyway, Hunter Hearts Helmsley is fed up with Mr. Perfect stealing all his escorts and puts him in a handicap match against Kane and The Big Show. Sorry, that “then, now, forever” thing has me confused. He wants a match with Perfect, pending his guts. H promises to show him “what the New Generation is all about.” Hope he’s challenging him to a “Chinlocks and Embarrassing Gimmicks” match.

Worst: Steve Austin Needs Help To Beat Jake Roberts, Is Still Fleeing From Savio Vega

The actual show-opener this week is Stone Cold Steve Austin, the hottest new act in the company, struggling to defeat a 40-year-old, crippled by drug abuse and alcoholism Jake “The Snake” Roberts. In fact, Austin gets hit with a DDT and has the match lost until Jerry Lawler interferes and spits booze in Jake’s eyes. I know I sound like a broken record, but the next time WWE Network does a special about how Austin cut that “Austin 3:16” promo and saved the business, remember that they jerked him around for like six months before they actually did anything with him. King of the Ring Austin is basically King of the Ring Wade Barrett right now.

To make matters worse, Lawler and Austin double-team Jake after the match and RUN IN TERROR when Savio Vega shuffles out with his Caribbean Strap. This is the same Savio who gets the sh*t beaten out of him by two randos cosplaying Diesel and Razor Ramon later in the same show. Therefore, if you do the math, Stone Cold is equal to the part-time wrestling heel announcer, less than Savio Vega and considerably less than Rick Bognar and Isaac Yankem in Halloween costumes. He’s also less than Jake. Do the math!

Worst: LOL, The Grimms

Welcome to the latest attempt at getting Ron and Don Harris over!

You may know “The Grimm Twins” as Jacob and Eli Blu with haircuts. If you don’t know the Blu Brothers, you may know them as the Bruise Brothers, the Disciples of Apocalypse, the Disciples of Destruction, the Harris Boys, the Harris Brothers, the Harris Twins or “Creative Control.” You may also know them as those guys with skinhead tattoos who sometimes wear Schutzstaffel shirts on TNA pay-per-views. They’re not great, in about every definition of “not great.”

Here, they debut as THE GRIMMS without even so much as a Tim Burton filter over them to make them look like wrestling Draculas or whatever. They lose in about four minutes to the Godwinns, who don’t even need to make the hot tag to finish them off. 1996 WWF was suddenly into reinventing the tag team wheel and just having guys win matches without tagging out or building any drama. I guess when you have The Grimms in your hand, you play what you’ve been dealt.

Best: ‘With My Baby Tonight’ Is Actually A Pretty Good Song

And now, the dramatic followup to the “Jeff Jarrett didn’t really sing that one country song he said he sang” scandal.

Last week, it was revealed that Guy Who Is About To Show Up On Nitro Jeff Jarrett is the “Milli Vanilli” of the World Wrestling Federation, and didn’t actually sing ‘With My Baby Tonight.’ You might be thinking, “of course he didn’t, he’s a pro wrestler with a country singer gimmick, I never assumed he actually sang the song,” or even, “why the f*ck would this ever bother me,” but it’s enough to build up two weeks worth of intrigue.

As it turns out, the “real Double J” is Jarrett’s roadie, The Roadie, also known as Jesse James. You’ll eventually know him as “The Road Dogg” Jesse James, a guy who got 10 times more over than Triple H during the Attitude Era doing like 1/10th the work. Here, he’s primed to become a huge star by being a guy who willfully helped Jeff Jarrett deceive the fans by singing a country song that wasn’t played anywhere but on a wrestling show. Great plan. You know what’d be just as great? Turning Billy Gunn into the Honky Tonk Man. Let’s do both, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Fake Diesel debut Raw

Worst: The Endless Conversation About Diesel And Razor Ramon

Savio Vega wrestles “Razor Ramon,” featuring Gorilla Monsoon on commentary. To say it was a disaster is to dramatically understate the meaning of “disaster.” Imagine a monsoon that was actually full of gorillas, and threw them at villages, like an Ape Sharknado. That’s what this was. Here’s a paraphrasing of the conversation. To get the full effect, read it over and over for 10 minutes.

Kevin Kelly: “A big move from Razor Ramon!”
Gorilla: “That’s not Razor Ramon!”
Jim Ross: [screaming] “IT SAYS RAZOR RAMON ON HIS TIGHTS CALL HIM RAZOR RAMON”
Gorilla: “That’s not Scott Hall!”
Jim Ross: “I NEVER SAID IT WAS SCOTT HALL, I SAID RAZOR RAMON”
Gorilla: “But that’s not Razor Ramon!”
Jim Ross: “All that matters is that he’s a big rough athlete and WWF needs those! He’s an athlete! A big rough athlete! AND HIS NAME IS RAZOR RAMON”

[repeat]
[repeat]
[repeat]
[repeat]
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The finish is Savio defeating Razor Ramon by disqualification when BIGDANNYKEWL DIESEL debuts. If you’ve never seen the Fake Diesel, yes, that’s Kane in his saddest-ever gimmick. Keep in mind that Kane wrestled as a dentist, the Unibomber and a Christmas tree, but this is his saddest gimmick. The crowd chants “FAKE FAKE FAKE” during the match, and there’s a damn “BIG DADDY DENTIST” sign behind him during his debut.

The nicest thing I can say about him is, “his jackknife powerbomb didn’t look even half as bad as that Razor’s Edge.”

Best: A Manager Tag That Barely Involves The Managers

Finally, we get a little in-ring salvation (cough) in the form of Shawn Michaels vs. Vader. It’s formally Shawn and Jose Lothario vs. Vader and Jim Cornette, but the managers barely get involved, and their interaction is limited to some light punching and eye rakes. The big money moment is Lothario getting stuck in the ring with Vader, who just sorta threateningly holds him in place before Irish whipping him into the corner so he can tag out. Sure!

It’s also formally a tag match so Michaels can lose again, which he does in severe fashion after power and Vader bombs. This was helpful in rebuilding Vader after the nonsense at SummerSlam, but short-lived, as he’s more or less being fattened up to get slaughtered by Sid at Buried Alive. Still, pre-“fat piece of sh*t” Vader was hard to mess up, and Prime Vader Content is almost always better than being Vaderless.

Next week: Aldo Montoya vs. The Sultan, followed by 55 minutes of me trying to swim back to shore after throwing myself off a bridge.

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