Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Bret Hart ended an Owen Hart vs. British Bulldog match by hugging everyone and reforming the Hart Foundation with an anti-American fan slant. The Real Double J made a kid uncomfortable and insulted the Honky Tonk Man, some luchadors nobody remembers did jumping spinning nothings, and The Undertaker got his face burned by a fireball.
Note: Our holiday time off put these columns a little behind schedule, so this will be the first of two this week to catch up. Look for the 4/14/97 episode on With Spandex on Friday, followed by regularly scheduled programming on Monday and Wednesday next week.
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.
Notable Re-post: If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what it should say on Bret Hart’s tombstone. Stone Cold Steve Austin has thoughts on that later in the program..
And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for April 7, 1997.
Worst: The Legion Of Doom Get Sloppy
Up first this week is my favorite Best and Worst of vintage Raw running gag, “The Legion of Doom are terrible at insults.” If you aren’t familiar with this, the Road Warriors are two giant, muscular, violent dystopian street punks in spiked shoulder-pads who promise to end your life via bizarrely verbose, G-rated threats. Whereas most guys like this would say “I’m going to break your legs” or maybe, I don’t know, “I’m going to fucking murder you for real,” the Legion of Doom will be like, “we’re gonna give you the ol’ TWENTY-THREE SKIDOO in your STINKY WIENER!” The “rush” they’re always talking about comes from clean humor.
This week, we miss the entire finish of the Owen Hart and British Bulldog versus the Godwinns match because Hawk can’t say, “we’re going to hurt them,” he has to say, “what we are going to do is knock the ever so rancid bile right out of your bladders!” Road Warrior Hawk is the BLADDEST MAN ON THE PLANET.
To make matters worse, the LOD go straight from biological creative writing to interfering, trying to keep Owen and Bulldog from escaping the Godwinns’ slop bucket. But oh no, the heels move at the last minute and the Legion of Doom end up getting covered in Phineas and Henry’s ever-so rancid bile. That leads to a brawl between the stupid babyface teams, and like four backstage segments of Owen and Bulldog showing the replay and laughing about it.
Don’t worry, the Hart Foundation will eventually get their comeuppance. Or, as Hawk might put it, “A BUN IN THE HAND IS WORTH POO IN THE TUSH, TELL EM ANIMAL.”
Best/Worst: Rockabilly, Premiering Soon
You’ve been soooah good!
Last week, the Honky Tonk Man had a brain aneurysm of something and briefly decided that The Real Double J Jesse Jammes would be a good protege. He gave Jammes (who I’m still calling “Jammies”) a “hair-loom” guitar, which James dicked around with sarcastically before breaking in front of him. It was v. rude.
This week, Honky Tonk Man walks to the ring with Billy Gunn for Gunn’s match with Stone Cold Steve Austin. You think the point is supposed to be that Gunn is HTM’s new guy, but you quickly find out that Gunn hasn’t yet agreed to be the protege, and apparently Honky hasn’t even talked to him about it. Even though he walked to the ring with him? And it works out great, too, because Austin is hot fire and gives Gunn basically zero offense. For an apparent repackaging, Gunn just gets put through the wringer. It’s great. Austin just beats his ass. We find out why this was so one-sided a little later.
But yeah, after the match, Honky Tonk Man is like, “hey Billy Gunn, I’ve been watching you for a while now, and also I walked down to ringside with you like I was giving you away at a wedding, because I want you to be the new Honky Tonk Man. WHATTA YA SAY?” Gunn punches him in the face. You know a heel turn’s starting great when the heel that’s turning openly admits it’s a terrible idea before he turns.
Wither Sid?
So this week’s advertised main event is Sycho Sid vs. Mankind, but there’s a small problem … Sid isn’t here. He shoot no-showed the event claiming back problems, and the timing couldn’t be worse as like half the WWF’s roster is in South Africa. If you’re wondering why this column doesn’t have any pictures of Ahmed Johnson in turn of the century pajamas attacking people with lumber, there you go.
Gorilla Monsoon asks Stone Cold Steve Austin to fill in for Sid, because he’s the only comparable talent in the building. Austin is like, “I already wrestled, but if I fill in for Sid now to save your ass, you have to let me fill in for Sid at In Your House and fight Bret Hart again.” Monsoon agrees, because what, is he gonna book Mankind vs. L.A. Gore in the main?
It actually makes for a much better series of cards, and for booking on the fly it makes a lot of sense. WWF booking is never better than when plans change and they have to come up with something from nothing, instead of sitting on an idea for months, getting what they want, and choosing nothing.
Worst: Holy Shit, This Roster
If you want to know how bad the talent-to-jobber ratio is for this episode, here’s a picture-in-picture promo from MMA fighter Vernon White, who I keep calling “Vernon Wells,” during The Headbangers vs. Barry Horowitz and Freddie Joe Floyd. Good lord.
White is here to “shoot fight” Ken Shamrock in a mixed martial arts exhibition, which neither man is able to convincingly do. They just kinda stand there doing nothing until one of them throws a big slow CM Punk kick and the other side steps it. The crowd murmurs their way through it while Vince McMahon talks about how cage fighters know “ju-jitso” and are misunderstood by American fans.
Vernon busts himself open going forehead-first into the mat for no reason to avoid a takedown, and Shamrock punches him until he wins by tapout. The crowd has no idea what tapping out means yet. After the match, Vader interrupts Shamrock’s promo and kinda-sorta challenges him, which eventually leads to Shamrock’s first official WWF match and a glorious instance of two guys who are terrible at holding back losing control and just striking the shit out of each other.
Vader faces Frank Stiletto. I guess he never got the memo.
Again, this is how impacted the roster is this week. FRANK STILETTO gets a match against Vader. And he looks just like you’d think a guy in 1997 named “Frank Stiletto” would look, too, with gross body hair on pasty skin, a crusty jobber mullet and underpants that say HANDSOME across the butt. If his catchphrase isn’t, “forget about it!” I’d be shocked.
This match didn’t work, because you can’t book a guy named Stiletto to be a face. He has to be a heel.
Worst: You Can’t Handle The Truth
Here’s the unofficial debut of the Truth Commission, the South African kinda-G.I. Joe military gang who tried to get over doing an anti-American gimmick like two weeks after Bret Hart turned heel and redefined anti-America gimmicks forever. Whoops!
This week we meet The Commandant. If you don’t remember him, don’t worry, he both debut and retired in 1997. He announces that next week’s Raw will happen in his home country of South Africa, shows some footage of Bret Hart carrying around a South African flag, and says that the Caucasians of Domination will teach the United States the true meaning of democracy. He doesn’t mention it here, but they’ll also teach us how a team can be objectively worse than Los Boricuas.
Best Worst: Shawn Michaels Is Such An A-Hole
The announce team hypes Bret Hart’s appearance alongside Bart Simpson on an issue of WWF Magazine which WWE Network can’t show for some reason, so we get lots of lingering wide shots of the crowd. Backstage, Shawn Michaels is like, “oh jeez Bret you know the Simpsons is a CARTOON, right?” Come on, Shawn, I know being on an episode of The Simpsons during its glory days is no cameo on Pacific Blue, but give him SOMETHING.
A huge portion of the show is dedicated to giving Shawn a live mic and letting him say whatever he wants about Bret Hart while Bret’s 9,000 miles away. You can imagine how it goes.
With Bret gone, the story becomes that when Bret was Heavyweight Champion and Shawn was Intercontinental Champion, Shawn took a backseat to Bret and always supported him and wanted the WWF to be great and happy. When it was Shawn’s turn to be champion with Bret supporting him, Bret only did so “kicking and screaming,” used WCW as leverage against the world’s greatest man Vince McMahon, and wanted to see WWF fail without him. Shawn also claims WWF never did better business than they did in 1995-1996, which is … not super true. But now Bret only cares about the bottom line, and Shawn, the guy who just retired temporarily because he didn’t like wrestling anymore, cares the most about wrestling. It’s the kind of promo that either makes you want to punch Shawn in the back of the head.
If that’s not enough, he ends the promo by doing something that would piss Bret off … taking off his clothes and humping Vince. Vince gets a look on his face like senpai noticed him. The striptease is interrupted by Owen and Bulldog, who have only been in like five segments already and need to be in a sixth because Savio Vega and Marc Mero are in Africa.
Best/Worst: Austin And Foley Do The Best They Can
I went with a wide shot of the main event, because with the limited roster, the booking plan was, “punch each other until everyone the crowd’s already seen returns.” So Austin and Mankind do their best aimless punching and brawling until the finish, which sees the Bulldog and Owen Hart come to the ring AGAIN, followed by the Legion of Doom, followed by Vader. Vader tries to body attack Austin from behind and accidentally hits Mankind, causing a further brawl, and nobody can keep them apartheid. Sorry, “apart.” Stupid autocorrect.
Next Week: Half of Raw comes to you from South Africa, where they don’t like flowers, Sid still isn’t around, and Crush main events. Hasa Diga Eebowai.
