Pre-show notes: Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network, and here to watch the SummerSlam that preceded it. 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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So!
Before We Begin
Here’s what you need to know about SummerSlam ’96.
https://dailymotion.com/video/x15o3v2
Todd Pettengill Masturbated To Sunny’s Clothes, I Guess
In 1996, WWE thought it would be a great idea to have a six-hour pre-show for SummerSlam. The idea is that SummerSlam is the “biggest party of the summer,” so they set up an above-ground pool in the back of Cleveland’s Gund Arena, surrounded it with sand and told wrestlers to stand around it in swimsuits. I don’t know. This is mostly an excuse for the normally True Neutral Todd Pettengill to go full Attitude Era Jerry Lawler, creeping around trying to look at butts and saying things like “OH MY GOD LOOK, LOOK AT MARLENA.”
He also has this conversation with Sunny, which could be pulled from the DMs of anybody currently wrestling in SHIMMER:
“You gonna wear that yellow bathing suit?”
“I wanted to wear that yellow bathing suit, but honey, you never gave me back the top. Where is my bathing suit top, what did you do with it?”
“You mean when you threw it to me on television.”
“Yeah, but you never FedExed it to me like you said you were. Where is it?”
“I don’t think you’d want it back.”
This is the FIRST THING HE SAYS on the Free For All. They STARTED with, “Todd Pettengill masturbates to your clothes.” I’m not sure if he like, wore it while he masturbated or if he just XHamster’d it, but holy sh*t, too much information. Maybe that should’ve been Todd’s character. “Hey there everyone, Todd Pettengill here, standing by alongside Stephanie Wiand. Later, I’m gonna watch her break eggs with her feet! Up first, Savio Vega.”
The Jake The Snake/Jerry Lawler Feud Is Still Depressing
If you haven’t been following along with the weekly columns, here’s what you need to know.
At one point in his life, Jake “The Snake” Roberts had problems with drugs and alcohol. By 1996 he’d cleaned up, found Jesus, things were good (or so I hear). Jerry Lawler couldn’t stand the thought of Jake being happy, so he started dragging him through the mud on commentary, claiming that Jake was a hypocrite and a fraud who was still off the wagon. The problem is that Lawler was right: a bottle of Stevens had awakened ancient demons, and Jake actually was off the wagon, and was still battling drug and alcohol addiction while claiming to be clean. Instead of following a normal WWF story arc, it mostly played out as Lawler spending hours at a time making alcoholism jokes and humiliating Jake at every turn. Eventually Jake left the company in shambles, and Lawler was just … correct? It even feels bad to type.
Jake took the “Portuguese Man O’War” Aldo Montoya under his wing as a protege and taught him the DDT. Yes, he probably said, “when the guy’s bent over, put his head under your arm and fall back.” Aldo couldn’t have figured that out on his own. Aldo managed to get a few upset wins on Lawler, so Jerry piledrove him on Raw and poured liquor down his throat. At SummerSlam, Lawler and Roberts finally have their big blowoff match, and it … uh, well, it ends with Lawler hitting Jake in the throat with a bottle and pouring liquor down his throat.
Jake wasn’t in any kind of shape to carry his end of a feud, so they end up tying in the Montoya stuff and soft-debuting Mark Henry to get “revenge.” Still, watching a brutally suffering alcoholic get beaten up, doused in alcohol and laughed at on a show that is for all intents and purposes fictional (allowing us to avoid tying in real-life situations like this that might end up being uncomfortable or, you know, fatal) is too much. Ethically, this feud is one of the very worst things they’ve ever done on camera.
Paul Bearer Urned On The Undertaker
The Undertaker spent about half an hour battling Mankind in the “Boiler Room Brawl,” a match that is retroactively kinda boring, but sets the tone for literally every hardcore match WWF had after it. The payoff is Paul Bearer turning his back to The Undertaker, allowing Mankind to “kill” him and win the match. Undertaker’s died a lot, don’t worry. This time he’s taken away by druids, never to be seen again (until Monday).
I wanted to do one of those fun paragraphs here where I recap the ridiculousness of a WWF feud, but I remembered we’re about a year away from Paul Bearer revealing he impregnated Undertaker’s mom on the funeral parlor floor and fathered Taker’s monstrous, basement dwelling half-brother, and that sh*t’s gonna take more than a paragraph to explain.
Shawn Michaels Is Still The WWF Champion Because [Deep Sigh]
So, as the story goes, Vader was supposed to win the WWF Championship here. He actually beats Shawn twice — once by count-out and once by disqualification — but the match kept being restarted because Vader’s manager Jim Cornette wanted the gold. Vader flies too close to the sun, misses a moonsault and Shawn hits one of his own to retain the title.
On paper, it plays like WWF’s version of Sting vs. Vader. Those matches were the best because Sting’s strong and resilient as hell, but Vader’s a force of nature who won’t stop forearming you in the ear, so you get lots of fiery comebacks halted by a hateful fat dude throwing his body at folks. In practice, Shawn bumps like his life depends on it and Vader has one of like three good matches he had in his entire WWF run, but it’s just … off. Even if you don’t know the backstage gossip, you can see Shawn lose it at points during the match and break character. You can see the frustration in everybody’s faces, and the overbooked nonsense just makes it worse and worse. Shawn would do a similar match at the next show, In Your House: Mind Games, where he has one of the best matches you’ve ever seen with Mankind, only to have it end with a colossal fart noise. These were the blowoffs, man, not the throwaway building blocks on Raw.
Speaking of throwaway building blocks on Raw, here’s the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for August 19, 1996.
Best/Worst: Third Wheel’s Always In The Way
This week, we get a new announce team: Jim Ross and Jerry “The King” Lawler.
And Kevin Kelly.
I’ve been writing a lot about how weird it is to see Stone Cold Steve Austin post-Austin 3:16, pre-Bret Hart feud, where he’s almost right but not quite, and WWF hasn’t figured out what to do with him. That’s this announce team. You’ve got the perfect version of Jerry Lawler: the hateful, insecure King who hates Burger King jokes and wants to bash Ultimate Warrior over the head with a velvet painting of the Ultimate Warrior. You’ve got the perfect version of Jim Ross: He’s still at the beginning of his WWF career and full of fire, ready to scream melodramatically about indignities and injustices, but in a way that sounds sincere. You never thought Jim Ross was doing a Tony Schiavone “greatest moment in the history of our sport” thing. To most modern fans, they’re the classic Raw announce team. They’re the voices you hear in your head when you think “wrestling.” Gorilla and Bobby for the ’90s.
And Kevin Kelly.
Watch this episode and count how many times your brain goes, “Man, I wish Kevin Kelly would stop talking so King and JR could call the match.” He’s not a bad announcer, I guess, but he’s the prototypical Byron Saxton. He’s Michael Cole without the confidence. He’s not adding anything, and the WWF has just stumbled onto the team that, at their best, added the most.
I’ll be honest, though, I’d take a Cole/Kelly/Saxton trio if it meant not hearing Vince McMahon start the show with WAAAHCAM EVRAWAHH TO MAHN DAH NAH RAHHH.
Best: Important Dark Matches
We don’t see them on the show, obviously, but this episode of Raw featured two notable competitors in dark matches.
The first is Rick Titan, also known as ECW and WAR’s “Big Titan.” You may know him best as the poor guy WWF trotted out as “Razor Ramon” when Scott Hall left the company for WCW. The second is “Flex Kavana,” a former college football player who ended up becoming an eight-time WWE Champion, the most bankable movie star in Hollywood and one of the most charismatic and universally beloved entertainers in the world. You may have heard of him.
Best/Worst: WWE Loves Its Soda Feuds
Faarooq kicked Ahmed Johnson in the one place he wasn’t wearing kneepads (his lower back) and ruptured Ahmed’s kidney, putting him on the shelf. That meant the Intercontinental Championship had to be vacated, so on this week’s Raw we start a tournament to name a new champion. Fun fact: there were Intercontinental Championship tournaments in 1996, 1997 and 1998, in case you thought “the Intercontinental Title is cursed” was a new meme.
Our first first-round matchup is Owen Hart vs. The British Bulldog. They’re best friends and both members of Camp Cornette, so we get a picture-in-picture of Jim backstage, complaining about how Gorilla Monsoon’s not giving him a fair shake. Knowing what we know about Monsoon as WWF President, I’ve gotta side with Cornette here. Gorilla did that sh*t on purpose. Owen and Bulldog tear it up for a little while and even bust out a vertical suplex from the apron to the floor, which is as All Japan as WWF gets in ’96.
Unfortunately (because Raw doesn’t want us to have nice things), the finish is predictably dumb. The fight goes to the outside, where Sunny’s sitting in on commentary. Bulldog kinda ends up in her lap and gets counted out, prompting Sunny to throw her drink in his face (pictured, spectacularly) for being a “pervert” who tried to put his head under her dress. Sure! That brings out Jim Cornette, who calls her a “little slut,” and basically this match’s finish is The Internet. Nobody actually did anything, and everybody’s pissed to the point of violence over it.
Best/Worst: It’s All Downhill From Here
On one hand, it’s Vader squashing the piss out of Tracy Smothers. On the other, Vader just got his big WWF run vetoed by a hissyfit at SummerSlam, so it’s a slow, steady march to the bottom from here on out. He’d get a few more chances to shine, but ultimately he ends up a fat piece of sh*t. In a way, I guess we all do.
Best: WWF Stumbles Upon Another Good Idea
The Undertaker’s dead, but he’s always dead, so I guess he’s double-dead? That gives him non-urn-based supernatural powers, such as the ability to make the lights flicker throughout the show. They initially explain it as “technical difficulties,” but once Paul Bearer’s out here yelling about how maggots and worms are eating Undertaker’s corpse, we know the score.
Mankind’s trying to build a family. He wants Sable to be his mommy and Paul Bearer to be his daddy. Unfortunately for him, “daddy” turned heel on the one guy in the company who could literally make lightning strike him indoors, so the druids that carried Taker out at SummerSlam carry him back in on Raw. Paul Bearer is convinced that Taker’s shoot dead despite knowing this motherf*cker loves to play possum and sit up to scare folks, but he falls for it anyway. Taker sits up, reveals that WHOOPS HE’S NOT ACTUALLY DEAD FROM A GUY PUTTING HIS FINGERS IN HIS MOUTH, and uses his monster powers to make fire shoot up from the four ringposts. Does that sound familiar?
My going theory is that Kane and Undertaker naturally share certain supernatural powers because of their mom, and/or that druid cult that murdered a trio of young girls or whatever. That gave them darkness and fire powers, and maybe teleportation? Definitely enhanced size, strength and stamina. The urn is what makes Taker so much more powerful than Kane, though, and that all hinges around Bearer. He’s got the ashes of Bray Wyatt’s rocking chair in there, because Time Is A Flat Circle. That light that shoots up when you open the urn? The light of the fireflies.
This is all bullsh*t and I’m kidding, but it’s not any weirder than “I kept your burn victim little brother’s life a secret and locked him in a basement watching episodes of Superstars until he wanted to become a wrestler.”
Worst: You Don’t Like Stone Cold Steve Austin, Guys, You Like Savio Vega
Here’s how it breaks down: Ahmed Johnson was the Intercontinental Champion. He won a battle royal that gave him the opportunity to face the WWF Champion on Raw the night after SummerSlam. Shawn Michaels was WWF Champion, but was supposed to lose to Vader, and assumedly Vader would then face Ahmed on Raw. Ahmed was supposed to face Faarooq for the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam. If your brain works like mine, that suggests that Faarooq would beat Ahmed for the IC title, then Ahmed would maybe shock Vader the next night?
Regardless, Faarooq Critical’d Ahmed’s insides and Shawn wasn’t ready to wake up from The Boyhood Dream, so we’re stuck doing ANOTHER battle royal, this time with just four guys, for a future shot at the title. It’s Savio Vega, Goldust, Sycho Sid and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Guess which one of those four the crowd is suddenly super into and wants to see win? Guess which one goes out like 5 minutes before Savio Vega?
The highlight here is Jim Ross mentioning that Austin wants to wrestle Bret Hart, which (combined with Jim Ross himself) is the spark Austin desperately needed to break through. Goldust ends up winning, which I’m down for, but we don’t refer to him as “former WWE Champion Goldust,” so you know how it goes.
Best: Speaking Of How It Goes
The WWF Champion decides to wrestle the night after SummerSlam anyway, and he faces the 650-pound Yokozuna. Two things:
1. Yoko had been a babyface up until now, but he’s suddenly with Camp Cornette again, because reasons.
2. This is Yoko’s last appearance on WWF television, and we’d tragically lose him to pulmonary edema only four years later.
The match is only 6 minutes long and nowhere near the epic match it could’ve been if Shawn’s Boyhood Dream and Yoko’s initial run with Mr. Fuji had coincided, but it’s still surprisingly good. Yoko’s got to be one of the most underrated in-ring performers WWE’s ever had. He does well here but misses a big leg, and eats Shawn’s smaller, extended leg for the loss. Shawn Michaels is the most charismatic and perfect WWF Champion of all time, have you heard the good news?
Next week, Raw gets pre-empted for tennis and ends up airing unopposed on a Friday. Remember when that used to happen? Tennis and dog shows. Now it takes an act of God to shut it down.
