The Best And Worst Of WWF Raw Is War 1/19/98: Mike Tyson’s Shove-Out!!

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Stone Cold Steve Austin won the 1998 Royal Rumble, Mike Tyson declared his love of “Cold Stone,” and Kane and Paul Bearer literally murdered the Undertaker by locking him in a casket, chopping it with an axe and setting it on fire. He’s fine!

If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here. Check out all the episodes you may have missed at the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War and Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw tag pages. Follow along with the competition here.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for January 19, 1998.

Best: The Undertaker Is Alive, Probably, But Missing!

If you like people playing the Undertaker’s entrance theme and walking out dressed as the Undertaker only to reveal that your Undertaker is in another castle, this is the show for you.

We open this week with the dastardly Paw Bear, who talks about, you know, killing a guy on pay-per-view. He takes great pride in making children cry at the loss of their precious 7-foot tall biker zombie mortician, and tells us that Undertaker’s gone forever. There is no Undertaker, only Kane! Then the Undertaker’s music hits, some druids wheel the chopped up and torched casket to the ring, and wait just a minute King, it’s Kane. Nothing really happens, but they’re getting a lot of mileage out of rolling people to the ring in that one casket. Riding down the ramp in that’s like the WWF’s equivalent of a log flume.

Shawn Michaels is particularly upset about what happened to the Undertaker, because he’s in the winning matches and pointing at his dick business, not the supernatural murder business. D-Generation X spends most of the episode “searching” for Undertaker, like so much Leslie Nielsen, and at one point have Chyna lift minis up to their eye level so they can (1) ask about Taker’s whereabouts and (2) make fun of them for being short and Mexican. Hey, just because they’re engaged in a task doesn’t mean they can’t work in some degenerating.

The most notable moment of the search happens when a hearse rolls into the arena. D-X opens it expecting a fight, only to find that it’s a SEX HEARSE full of SEX HOOKERS. You know, those famous gentleman’s club hearse shuttles. Shawn and Hunter jump in the hearse to have sex with the … dead ladies? Ghost ladies? And we get this great image that sums up so, so much of Chyna’s life:

Best, I Guess: D-X’s First Penis-Themed Cookout

The payoff to all of this is a promo late in the show where — get this — Undertaker’s music starts, and what appears to be the Undertaker lowers from the ceiling. But wait just a minute, additional announcer, that’s not the Undertaker, it’s Shawn Michaels dressed as the Undertaker! Twice in the same episode! Three times if you count the hearse. Although I’ll give them this, Shawn Michaels wearing the Undertaker’s entrance gear is basically every e-fed character ever.

This leads to Triple H and Chyna showing up with a bunch of cookout equipment to celebrate the Undertaker being burned to death, giving us the first of many D-Generation X sexy cookouts. Penises look like sausages! They cover a variety of topics, including:

• how much Triple H hates Ric Flair — that doesn’t last very long — and how Space Mountain is old and broken down
• Trips challenging Owen Hart to a European Championship match next week. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t wrestle, Owen wins the title from someone else, and then a month and a half later when they DO wrestle, Hunter wins. Then he wins again at WrestleMania. It’s all about the game, something something
• Shawn Michaels points out that everything Royal Rumble winner Stone Cold Steve Austin’s ever done, he did first, and that he lays down for abso lutely nobody

The WrestleMania builds to Kane/Undertaker, Austin/Michaels and (I guess) Hunter/Owen are all in full swing. And we haven’t even gotten to the most memorable part yet!

By the way, if you’re wondering how Owen Hart’s doing, he follows up his sad Royal Rumble appearance by getting thrown into an 8-man tag with The Head Bangers and Taggamidginogo against Los Boricuas. Not great, Bob.

Worst: They’re Not The Mounties

The most memorable part of the WrestleMania 14 build is, of course, the return of The Quebecers, also known as the Québécois if you’re a Quebecer. They get a disqualification win over Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charles when Jack randomly attacks the referee.

Between the Quebecers and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, I’m wondering if Vince McMahon watched one of those filler episodes of Nitro full of dudes like Bobby Eaton and Chris Adams and was like, “GET ME ALL THE AGING TAG TEAMS YOU CAN FIND.” And then WCW scooped up Rick Martel, just in case. I love that there was a 1988 Monday Night Wars happening within the 1998 version.

Worst: The Ballad Of A Very Tired Ahmed Johnson

One of my favorite things about the 1998 Royal Rumble was Ahmed Johnson’s very slow, barely mobile entrance. If you missed the GIF, please watch it. Ahmed’s star has officially fallen, and he’s slowing down as his body begins to look more and more like a wet garbage bag.

I bring this up because he gets two additional funny lazy moments on Raw. The first comes at the end of the Everybody Fights extravaganza between the Disciple of Apocalypse and the Nation of Domination. It ends in a disqualification, because of course it does, and then everybody fights. The Rock and Mark Henry show up to make it a 5-on-3 attack on the Disciples, so Ken Shamrock and our man Ahmed have to “run” down and make the save. Shamrock runs, but Ahmed doesn’t. Ahmed doesn’t even stand. Ahmed Johnson seriously figures out how to do a run-in without leaving the ground. Watch in amazement:

Kama’s in there wondering why a sea lion just attacked him.

This sets up The Rock vs. Ahmed Johnson later in the night, which might be the ultimate “going up?” “no, sorry, going down” match possible. Ahmed’s not even “going” down. He spends almost the entire match looking like a dead Family Guy character.

And he wore Alex Wright’s trunks to do it, apparently. At one point in the match, Ahmed’s just lying there and The Rock’s kicking him, and Rock has to stop and do a bunch of poses to keep it interesting. I’m thinking The Rock thought maybe Ahmed was dead, and needed to give him a minute to recover. I’m also thinking Ahmed had been legally dead since Friday afternoon and he’s still moving around because gas is leaving his body. I don’t think I’ve ever seen clinical depression as a wrestler before.

Enjoy these last few weeks of Ahmed, everybody.

Also Happening This Week

Future WCW World Heavyweight Champion Vince Russo, seen here standing next to where he gets his ideas and opinions, tell us that the announcers on Raw aren’t gonna “shoot” with us, and if we want a “shoot,” we should subscribe to WWF and Raw magazines. His on-screen persona is “Vic Venom” and he thinks he’s very cool, but I wonder if he realizes how much he looks like one of the background blowjob joke characters from Clerks.

The New Age Outlaws defeat The Godwinns by hitting them with a stuffed pig (pictured). We find out after the match that the pig had a brick inside of it, so when Henry angrily tears it open it briefly looks like one of those pooping keychains. I wish they’d won by hitting him with an actual stuffed pig. Like, the Godwinns’ lives have been so hard and full of barnyard fuckery that introducing something comfortable and soft destroys their entire ecosystem.

Marc Mero takes on the king of the jabbers, Tom Brandi, and easily defeats him again. Because it’s Tom Brandi. Earn Hebner could shoot a double-leg on Tom Brandi and totally shut him down. But yeah, the story of the match is that Sable gets a flower delivery at ringside — those 1-800-FLOWERS guys are gonna do their jobs even if you’re in the middle of live television — and Mero spoils it by stealing and attacking Brandi with them. Yes, Tom Brandi is (to my knowledge) the only person to sell a small bouquet of hand-picked daisies to the back of the head.

Worst: The Blackjacks Fold

Thickest wrestler in the world Blackjack Bradshaw gets an NWA North American Heavyweight Championship match against Jeff Jarrett, and loses when Blackjack Windham tries to hit a lariat behind the referee’s back and accidentally takes out his own partner. But swerve, here’s what those jackass announcers aren’t shootin’ with you about: it turns out former NWA Everything Champion Barry Windham is IN CAHOOTS with the NWA.

Don’t worry, this doesn’t lead to a pay-per-view match of anything. It leads to another Bradshaw vs. Jarrett title match, which also ends in disqualification. You’ve gotta love that their idea to get Jeff Jarrett over was:

1. cut a promo about how you hate every wrestling promotion but you’re gonna begrudgingly wrestle anyway
2. shade the most popular guy in the company for being sacrilegious
3. dress like an Aztec warrior
4. align yourself with a bunch of old guys from a company that lost most of its relevancy about a decade ago
5. win all your matches via disqualification

“Try to fuck a football player’s wife and get hit with a metal briefcase every week for a year and half” isn’t seeming like such a bad idea now, is it? [checks notes] It is.

Best: Cold Stone Screamery

Finally this week we have the famous Mike Tyson/Stone Cold Steve Austin pull-apart brawl that sets up WrestleMania 14 and more or less changes the direction of the company forever. Revisiting the entire episode, the most interesting part is how brilliantly they put the pre-segment material together. You want the crowd to cheer the wrestler over the celebrity guest, and sure, they might just choose to do that anyway, but if you put the effort into designing it so they have no other choice, you’re doing it right.

Mike Tyson shows up at the top of the show, and throughout the night they jump backstage to show him interacting with wrestlers. We see him hanging out with a bunch of WWE Hall of Famers, we see the Nation of Domination trying to “recruit” him, and we see a wonderfully awkward segment wherein a drunk Sunny tries to sleep with him while the Legion of Doom stands around making Little Rascals faces, because they’ve never cursed or seen a naked lady before. In contrast, Austin never shows up before the segment. They just show a graphic of him that’s like, “Austin will be here later.” So by the time the segment starts, the crowd’s kinda sick of seeing Tyson, and SUPER INTO seeing Austin.

So the segment starts, and the obvious idea is that Vince McMahon’s going to happily announce that Mike Tyson will be appearing at WrestleMania. They’ve made this super clear for several weeks now and even had Tyson show up at the Rumble, so there’s no question of whether or not he’s going to Mania. Of course he is. So when Austin interrupts, he’s not really interrupting any “real” announcement. That’s pretty important. We all know where it’s going, and Austin stepped in to make it interesting.

In a moment that remains in contrast to almost every other celebrity involvement in WWE history — Lawrence Taylor beating Bam Bam Bigelow, Floyd Mayweather beating up Big Show to set up him beating up Big Show again, Flo Rida shoving Heath Slater down all the time and on and on — Austin gets in Tyson’s face and never once seems like his lesser. The crowd’s fully behind him, and despite Tyson’s reputation as the “baddest man on the planet,” you never think, “oh, Tyson’s gonna knock him out.” At worst, you’re like, “I wonder who would win in a fight?” Austin throws up the middle fingers, Tyson responds with a shove, and while this didn’t start the Attitude Era, it might be the Era’s point of no return.

And the best part of ALL of it is that now Vince McMahon is PUTRIDLY ANGRY at Austin for “ruining” his big announcement. There’s nothing the Mr. McMahon character loves more than making an announcement, and Austin showing up to show ass and make himself the center of attention robbed him of maybe his biggest announcement ever. So now instead of McMahon demurely rolling his eyes, we get Vince on the apron making demon faces, trying to kick Austin in the face while he’s being held back. Austin vs. McMahon is REAL now, and the stage is set for not only Tyson’s WrestleMania involvement and Austin’s christening as “the guy,” but all the Austin/McMahon nonsense that comes after.

Absolutely brilliant, and even better 20 years later.

Next Week:

“Triple H” faces Owen Hart in a European Championship match, the Nevada State Athletic Commission makes sure we never get a Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Mike Tyson match, and the New Age Outlaws vs. Cactus and Chainsaw feud kicks into gear. Also, Don King again!

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