Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Monday Night Raw: Nothing!
Nitro was on, but Raw was preempted by tennis. I’d love to see the reaction of wrestling fans in 2015 if Raw wasn’t on because of tennis or a dog show. There’d be so many condescending hashtags at the expense of those precious dogs. I don’t want to think about it.
This week’s show is called “Championship Friday,” because it features a championship match and aired on Friday. If you want to watch it, click here. Please enjoy the vintage Best and Worst of WWF Raw for September 6, 1996:
Worst: Matches Like This Are Why Triple H Is Always Such A Dick To People
Ahmed Johnson’s kidney got kicked so hard by Faarooq it went from looking like 1996 Ahmed Johnson to 2015 Ahmed Johnson, so he’s on the shelf indefinitely and the Intercontinental Championship is up for grabs. There’s a tournament happening to crown a new champion, and future Chief Executive Everything of WWE, Triple H, runs into an impossible round-one challenge: Sid.
The problem with this era of Sid in the WWF is that he’s not even a wrestler, he’s just an enormous muscle that flexes for a few minutes. That’s it. His matches aren’t even matches, really; he just walks to the ring, screams a lot, powerbombs a guy and leaves. It’s not in the fun Goldberg way, either, because Goldberg seemed like he wanted to win. Sid just exists, and picks people up to drop them. He’s so sweaty throughout the whole thing that it makes you feel like you’re watching a slab of meat thaw. A slab of meat in a Don Sutton wig. Anyway, Triple H gets folded in half with a powerbomb and pinned, because he’s still a few years away from, “yo I had enough a’this.”
The match is a dud, but there are two notable side stories:
The first is that Mr. Perfect is a sexually aggressive GOB Bluth type who can’t stand to see Triple H happy, so he’s trying to sleep with any girl he likes. Hunter already lost THE CLASSY AND BEAUTIFUL SABLE to Marc Mero, and now he’s out here having his backup valets Netflixed and Chilled by a Hennig. I love that in the 1990s, a dude that looks like Curt Hennig could believably be a ladies man and not just a weird dad. Can you imagine WWE putting Curtis Axel in a suit and having him scoop up Playmates without it being a joke?
This is all to build to Hennig helping Mero get to the Intercontinental Championship and screwing Helmsley, only to … uh, screw Mero and guide Helmsley to the Intercontinental Championship. In retrospect, I think Hennig was just playing both sides so he could snag that sweet, impressionable Connecticut trim.
Best: Sid Vs. An Elephant
The second is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. Want to know why Sid was so unstoppable during this match?
Okay, so, Sid made an appearance at a Special Olympics event and challenged an undefeated at tug-of-war elephant to a tug-of-war. That alone is worth squealing over 20 years later, but it gets better … Sid loses badly to the elephant, because I mean he’s undefeated AND ALSO A F*CKING REAL ELEPHANT, but the fellow athletes aren’t having it. They bum-rush Sid, convince him to from a Special Olympics super team and challenge the elephant to a rematch. He does, he does, and the combined force of Sycho Sid and like 20 Special Olympians snaps the elephant’s streak. This happened in real life.
I wish they’d cut basically any of these matches and presented the Sid story in its entirety. They would’ve won an Emmy.
Worst: Marc Mero Eliminates Stone Cold Steve Austin From The Tournament
If you need a reminder that “Austin 3:16” didn’t immediately catch on and set the wrestling world on fire, here’s Austin getting booted from round one of the Intercontinental title tournament by Wildman Marc Mero. Austin vs. Mero (and Savio Vega) was the Dolph Ziggler vs. Kofi Kingston of 1996. Austin was constantly wrestling these guys.
The pull apart brawl in the picture (featuring acting legend Klaus Kinski, apparently) happens after the finish. Austin gets frustrated that he can’t put C-minus-ass Mero away, so he counters a Mero shoulderblock by yanking the referee into it. The ref goes down in a heap, but still has the strength to disqualify Austin. Austin and Mero brawl and Austin hits him with a stunner, but it’s not “the stunner” yet, really, so Mero’s able to recover. Austin lives to fight another day, but not at the next pay-per-view, because he’s not on it. Jose Lothario wrestles, though, and Savio Vega has two matches. Yep, Austin 3:16 instantly created the boom period! History!
Worst: The Pug
Up next, Mankind gets a quick victory over one of the least thought-out characters of the year: Alex “The Pug” Porteau.
If you don’t remember him, he was an amateur wrestler who used the Steiner Brothers’ entrance theme and called himself a pug, I guess because Rick Steiner was a dog-faced gremlin and everyone in 1996 was super passive-aggressive. Nothing says toughness like a small, fat dog with breathing problems! The Pug was around for about a year, accomplished nothing and was released.
He’d make a grand return to WWE 13 years later at WrestleMania 25, where he … was one of the Cenas in John Cena’s entrance. Think of him as a Reverse CM Punk.
Worst: Too Soon
Here’s a quick example of how times have changed: during the 1996 Olympics, a bomb went off in the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, killing 1 (eventually 2) and wounding 11. Just over a month later, Jerry “The King” Lawler is on Raw asking Olympian Mark Henry how Jake “The Snake” Roberts was like the Olympics. “They both got bombed.” Holy sh*t, dude.
Best, Though: Mark Henry’s Clothes
On a more positive note (and in an attempt to not get irrational Internet Outraged over a joke from 19 years ago), let’s take a second to appreciate young Mark Henry’s clothes. Dude’s out here in ill-fitting white shorts and penny loafers, and his shirt’s tucked in. That’s incredible. Not salmon jacket incredible, but incredible.
Lawler’s upset that Henry stopped him from pouring alcohol down a shoot alcoholic’s mouth at SummerSlam and challenges him to a wrestling match. Henry’s all, “YEAH LET’S FIGHT,” and Lawler’s like, “no, I said a wrestling match.” Henry backs down for some reason, saying he hasn’t trained enough to have a wrestling match, and Lawler tells him he should’ve won the gold medal in being a coward. YA BURNT.
Worst: An Iron Sheik Promo So Bad Even The Show It’s On Doesn’t Want To Show It
My new favorite feud is the WWE Network closed captioning guy vs. The Iron Sheik.
Sheik returns via Mr. Bob Backlund, and the idea is that Sheik’s bringing in and managing the next great WWF Champion. That turns out to be The Sultan, whose greatest contribution was proving that Rikishi could slum it even harder than when he was “making a difference” and trying to convert street gangs or whatever with his PMA and ‘A Different World’ jackets. The Sultan’s existence did provide a role for a young dork named Rocky Maivia, though, so I guess Sheik’s promise of the next great WWF Champion kinda came true.
Anyway, I don’t know if you know anything about The Iron Sheik after like 1987, but you can’t give him a life microphone. He yells [indistinctly] for a while until Raw just cuts to commercial. Sorry, everybody. Jim Ross says he thought Sheik was, “in a home somewhere,” for added shade.
BEST (But Super Worst): Jim Ross’ “Big News”
This is the most important thing on the show, so stay with me: Jim Ross teases big news all night long and finally reveals that “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel and Razor Ramon are on their way back to the World Wrestling Federation. You may know them as those two sarcastic guys doing spray-paint run-ins and changing the business over on TNT. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s important to note that he doesn’t say “Scott Hall” or “Kevin Nash” are returning, just Diesel and Razor Ramon.
(It’s one of the worst decisions of the decade.)
(I can’t wait to write about it.)
Best, But Worst: Where The Hell’s Our Main Event?
The main event is a WWF Championship match between VALIANT BEAUTIFUL HUMANITARIAN Champion Shawn Michaels and the challenger, Goldust, who got here via three different battle royals. It should be great and probably is, but we don’t get to see most of it … the match is cut with two commercial breaks, meaning huge chunks of it are missing and only the live crowd got to see the entire thing. They’re going nuts for it, too, but we have no idea why, because we got about 11 minutes of a 25-minute match. At least they left in all the chinlocks! The person who robbed us of Shawn Michaels vs. Goldust should be sent to prison. I’d pay good money to see Shawn Michaels vs. Goldust today.
Shawn wins, of course, with a moonsault press that is absolutely on the level and not at all reminiscent of a sexual position. The hands on the butts are for leverage. Mankind tries to attack him after the match, but Shawn scoots away.
Next week: The Intercontinental Championship tournament continues, we get even more updates about Ahmed Johnson’s butthole kidney, and The Undertaker tries to end the legendary winning streak of Salvatore Sincere. Not a joke. Plus, Barry Windham’s here as a camouflaged creeper throwing hands with a plumber. WE’RE IN THE BOOM PERIOD. DON’T MISS OUT.
Reminders:
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