Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: The show was preempted by tennis on Monday, so “Championship Friday” aired in its place. The tournament for the Intercontinental Championship is moving ahead at a glacier’s pace. WCW’s Glacier. Mr. Perfect is obessed with kidnapping Triple H’s escorts, Mark Henry isn’t confident enough in his wrestling ability to accept the challenge of an old man half his size and Sycho Sid teamed up with a bunch of Special Olympains to win a tug-of-war against an elephant. None of that is a euphemism.
If you’d like to watch this week’s show, you can do that here. Please enjoy the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw for September 9, 1996.
Worst: Jim Ross Wants To Beat The Sh*t Out Of Sunny
This week’s opening match is Faarooq Asaad vs. Savio Vega in the battle of guys with low centers of gravity and chinlock obsessions. It’s so bad it makes me do a Jake Gyllenhaal in The Day After Tomorrow thing where I’m fleeing down a hallway from my own boredom.
What I want to point out, though, is how blatantly Jim Ross (of all people) wants to physically beat up Sunny for being an attractive woman. It’s so vehement that he’s screaming about it before Kevin Kelly can even intro the show. The actual dialogue:
Lawler: “Is she beautiful or what?”
Ross: “Yeah she’s beautiful, all right … for a jezebel! And she still needs that trip to the woodshed as far as I’m concerned!”
Kelly: “WELCOME EVERYBODY TO MONDAY NIGHT RAW.”
There’s something very 1970s horror about a guy who looks like Jim Ross using Biblical references to describe wanting to take someone like Sunny to a woodshed to punish her for being shameless. Just throwing that out there. Lawler was always annoying with his “woo-hoos,” but at least he never made it sound like he wanted to The Hills Have Eyes her.
That’s not all, though …
Worst: TOO SOON FFS
Remember last week’s Raw, where Jerry Lawler compared Jake “The Snake” Roberts’ alcoholism to the 1996 Olympic bombing? This week, JR says that Savio Vega will have to use his quickness against Faarooq, or “he’s gonna end up looking like Tupac Shakur before this is all over.”
If you want to know how horrificially insensitive this is, Tupac was shot on September 7. This aired on September 9. Tupac died from internal hemorrhaging on September 13. They literally managed to make a dead Tupac joke before the body was cold. Did Vince send out a FIND OUT WHO DIED AND MAKE WRESTLING JOKES ABOUT IT memo? I’m honestly shocked that times had changed enough for WWE to take 9/11 seriously, and not have Lawler crack wise about how he “hadn’t seen twin towers fall like this” since Hulk Hogan wrestled Akeem and the Big Bossman.
Best/Worst: Get Well Soon, Ahmed
Speaking of Jake the Snake alocholism jokes, Lawler takes the opportunity during a “hope your kidney transplant goes well, Ahmed Johnson” video package to drop another one. The video itself is bizarre, with get well soon messages from heels and faces intercut with repeated footage of the injury. “Hey man, get well soon.” [Faarooq kicks Ahmed in the kidneys] “Heard what happened, hope you feel better!” [Faarooq kicks Ahmed at 10x speed]
The best part (surprise, surprise) is Stone Cold Steve Austin, making his only appearance on this week’s show by saying he hopes Ahmed comes back soon, so he can “pound the other kidney.” That’s cold, Chilly. Shawn Michaels has no comment, because the guy who suffered the kidney injury wasn’t Shawn Michaels.
Best: Jim Ross Is Not Having A Good Week
On Friday’s show, JR mentioned that he had it on good authority (on good The Authority) that Razor Ramon and “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel were on their way back to the World Wrestling Federation. The joke is that Razor Ramon and Diesel are coming back, but he never said “Scott Hall” or “Kevin Nash.” In 1996 that was enough to send a wrestling company into a flailing tailspin, so Hall and Nash were able to use bullsh*t commentary and a bad idea from a competitor to get their contracts renegotiated. JR has to read a prepared statement apologizing for causing problems, then immediately buries the apology by saying he’s right and it’s still happening. “THESE NEGOTIATIONS ARE AS ALIVE AS SWEET SAPPHIRE, KING.”
Worst: The Stalker
So, Barry Windham. He’s one of the best under-the-radar in-ring performers in modern wrestling history. If you aren’t familiar with his work, think of him as a lanky, Caucasian Ricky Steamboat. He’s a former NWA World Heavyweight Champion and a 2-time WWF Tag Team Champion, but after like 1989, every Windham appearance in WWF got stupider. In ’89 he was brought in as THE WIDOWMAKER, a cowboy who CREATES LADIES WITH DEAD HUSBANDS~. That lasted about 4 months. When he came back, he was THE STALKER, aka “Barry Windham in camo facepaint, and he hangs out by campifires or something.” That’s his entire character. He hails from “The Environment,” and that’s not even a joke. He’s wearing woodland camouflage to compete in a 20-by-20 blue square. He’s dumb as sh*t.
This is The Stalker’s debut, in a match against a wrestling plumber. Those hunting and tracking skills are gonna come in handy when you’re up against a guy who has his name written on the back of his shirt. Stalker wins with a crummy superplex, and … well, spoiler alert, but things never really get better. Soon Windham is repackaged as one of the “New Blackjacks,” and then he’s off to WCW again to feud with the No Limit Soldiers over birthdays and musical preferences.
Worst: Can We Go Back To The Dead People Jokes
Up next is Another Goddamn Crush Match, because these always go well.
This week, he gets to squash poor Freddie Joe Floyd while the announce team tries to get to the bottom of the “mystery” of whether or not Clarence Mason is a manager. That’s seriously what they talk about. They’re all, “YOU’RE A MANAGER,” and Mason responds with, “no I’m not, I’m his legal counsel,” and they’re all, “YEAH, WELL.” When Crush wins and Mason gets in the ring, the announce team is like, “LOOK AT HIM BEING EXACTLY LIKE A MANAGER.” Does … does anybody give a sh*t about the semantics of Clarence Mason’s job description?
As a quick aside, Crush has started using the heart punch as a finish, which is one of those moves that is great if you devote time and sustained effort into creating a universe where everyone accepts fantasy as reality. If you tried to get the heart punch over in a place like Ring Of Honor where they’re all about the srs pro wres business thing, it might not work. If you gave it to a Lucha Underground character, though, we’d be happily clapping our hands through moody backstage vignettes of a guy’s heart actually expanding and exploding from his chest after a match. In the right environment, you can buy a pro wrestler defeating his opponent with a hard stare. In 1996 WWF, all I can think is, “what, does Freddie Joe Floyd not have a ribcage?”
Best: The Undertaker Tries To End The Legendary Undefeated Streak Of Salvator Sincere
The main event is The Undertakre vs. Salvator Sincere. Quick, guess who wins!
The Salvator Sincere character is a difficult one to describe. He was an Italian stereotype who was insincere. Actually, that was super easy. He’s newish to the company and riding a Tatanka-esque winning streak. Paul Bearer (aka “Paw Bear”) recently turned on The Undertaker to side with Mankind and took the urn with him, so there were questions on whether or not Taker could be “the phenom” without it. Surprisingly, the 6-foot-10 super strong guy still does well without a fat Mickey Mouse hanging around at ringside clutching a f*cking vase.
This is the closest thing we get to a real match on the show, so I’ll give it a Best. JR spends most of it yammering on about Razor Ramon and Diesel, because if you’re gonna have a bad night, you might as well go for the gold. This is such a bad episode of Raw that they air multiple segments from Friday in their entirety … we see almost all of Lawler getting in Mark Henry’s face, as well as that Iron Sheik promo they cut from last week because commercials were more entertaining. I think they taped 3 episodes worth of wrestling in Wheeling and decided to stretch it out for 2 1/2 years.
Reminders:
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