Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Sid returned, but it’s less important than Sunny outsmarting the Honky Tonk Man and Jim Cornette by spraying both of them AND both Headbangers with a Super Soaker that shoots in three different directions.
If you haven’t seen this episode, you can watch it on WWE Network here, but make sure you’ve seen King of the Ring 1997 first.. 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 you thought of these shows.
Up first, let’s take a look at WWE’s most popular tournament for a meaningless title and, if you’re lucky, a low-quality Halloween costume.
Before We Begin
Here’s what you need to know about King of the Ring 1997, also known as, “the one after the important one, but before Billy Gunn ruined it.”
Hunter Hearst Helmsley Is Your King Of Kings Of The Ring
His inner monologue in that picture is like, “this is nice, but can we attach a skull mask to it?”
Hunter Hearst Helmsley, the man who was originally eliminated in round one and only got back into the tournament because Ken Shamrock shoot broke Vader’s nose, wins the King of the Ring tournament because Vader’s still got heat from Kuwait, Mankind’s accidentally getting over as a face and Ahmed Johnson mentioned the reason there haven’t been any black World Champions in a promo about how he doesn’t care that there have been no black World Champions. Triple H loves a tournament where the winner is just the guy who fucks up the least.
He defeats Mankind with a Pedigree after Chyna smashes the King of the Ring ceremonial scepter cross Foley’s back. After the match, H continues to beat Foley down with the crown. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t take off the cape and try to choke him with it. This is technically the beginning of the lifelong, one-sided Triple H vs. Mick Foley feud that’s still happening on Raw in 2017. So, settle in, I guess.
Stone Cold Steve Austin And Shawn Michaels Cannot Coexist
You’re probably wondering why there are three referees in that picture. This match is great, because of course it is, but like most of Shawn’s marquee matches from 1995-1997, it’s only great until the finish. That guy did not like being pinned.
In this one, Austin has Michaels pinned after a stunner, but the referee is down. Austin revives the referee and stuns him again, because that’s how he rolls. Michaels recovers and hits Sweet Chin Music on Austin, so a second referee runs down and … checks on the first referee. Michaels superkicks him. Michaels manages to revive the first referee again, but Austin kicks out at two. That brings out Earl Hebner, who disqualifies both men and throws out the match to the enjoyment of nobody. After the match, Austin and Michaels try to cheap shot each other with their respective Tag Team Championship belts, but referees four and five show up to back up Earl and send everyone to the back.
I wish I’d been in the room when Shawn was like, “hang on, hear me out on this … five referees.”
And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for June 9, 1997.
Best: A Nation Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand
This week’s most important development is the breakup of the original version of the Nation of Domination. This was necessary because:
- Crush and Savio Vega were garbage
- WWE was on the cusp of a wrestling faction race war and needed to make its black militant separatist group, you know, actually black
- the Nation running in to ruin every match like the poorest man’s nWo was already tired and old the second time they did it
- Ahmed Johnson needed to look as stupid as possible
At King of the Ring, Faarooq is doing pretty well in his WWF Championship challenge against the Undertaker until, you guessed it, Savio Vega and Crush start arguing at ringside. Undertaker sits up, scoops Faarooq upside down and crotch-faces him into the canvas for the 1-2-3.
Raw opens with a trios match, pitting the Nation against Ahmed Johnson and the Legion of Doom. Faarooq is doing pretty well until, you guessed it, Savio Vega and Crush start arguing. They try to save him on the outside, end up knocking themselves and him out, and angrily leave Faarooq to get destroyed 3-on-1 for the loss. After the match, only D’Lo Brown sticks around to help Faarooq to the back. This becomes important a little later.
Here’s a shot of Dok Hendrix trying to get into the Nation’s locker room to tell them how much blacker he is than them:
The backstage argument escalates until Faarooq storms back to the ring to make an important announcement: Savio Vega is fired, Crush is fired, Clarence Mason is fired, all the nameless henchmen are fired, and the Nation of Domination is now just him and D’Lo Brown. See what happens when you’re nice to people, and don’t accidentally Heart Punch them in the face?
Faarooq promises that we’ll see a “New Nation,” formed under him, and he challenges the two people he hates the most — Ahmed Johnson and the Undertaker — to a tag team match next week. That match ends up adding two new members to the crew, instantly improving the group and keeping it afloat until the August, when a bad rookie gets a live mic and becomes the most electrifying man in sports-entertainment.
Note: Clarence Mason and Ahmed Johnson end up in WCW feuding with Members of Harlem Heat about which letter they can and can’t use in their names, so we all probably should’ve been listening to Faarooq.
Worst: Social Media!
You know that crawl that runs at the bottom of WWE live shows, with tweets from @FoolUsTwiceSheamus or whoever that are like, “can’t wait to see what The Authority does to Seth Rollins in tonight’s main event #raw #redesignrebuildreclaim #thegame” or whatever? Here’s the original version of that; heavy praise for King of the Ring 1997 from AOL users such as “ILuvHB” and “LI Hitman.”
Vince McMahon reads them and is like, “WOW! HERE YOU GO, LOOK AT THIS!” Indeed, ladies and jenna-men.
Worst: Extremely Complacent Watchers
Paul E. Dangerously and Tommy Dreamer show up in the crowd, using the famous 1990s wrestling trope “they bought a ticket so they’re allowed to be at ringside,” so they’ll be there for Rob Van Dam’s appearance. You see, a huge brawl involving Jerry Lawler broke out at the ECW Arena a couple of days earlier, so Paul and Dreamer are here not only to confront Van Dam, but to tell him he’s “sold his soul.”
The only problem is that they show up a match early, so they have to sit through Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon versus the Headbangers. I’m surprised that shit didn’t immediately put them in a coma and carried out of the arena by EMTs. Furnas and LaFon are doing WWE’s favorite gimmick, Boring Guys, so they enter to no music, the announce team buries them the entire time, they demand to be called “the most exciting team in the World Wrestling Federation,” and they lose to THE HEADBANGERS when one of them accidentally splashes the other. The only way I’d give this a Best is if “accidental splashing” was somehow a callback to Mosh and Thrasher’s Super Soaker commercial. MINUS FIVE STARS.
So!
Rob Van Dam eventually does show up to face Flash Funk, and Paul and Tommy are irate. I think the weirdest part of all of this is that the ECW guys are pointing at Rob like, YOU SOLD YOUR SOUL, YOU SOLD YOUR SOUL, and Jerry Lawler’s on commentary talking about how WWF stars are superior and Rob Van Dam’s the only talent ECW ever had, and Rob’s fucking opponent is Too Cold Scorpio. Scorp’s just like, ♪ whistle and walk away ♪
Van Dam wins with a split-legged moonsault, and the ECW guys jump the rail to attack him and Lawler. The one part of this I really liked is that Heyman keeps trying to like, charge into Jerry Lawler and knock him down, but every time he does, Lawler just flips him and punches him in the face. Jim Ross has to be like, “Paul E. Dangerously is NO ATHLETE.” Flash Funk vanishes, because was he ever truly there at all?
Worst: The Gunns Explode
The last time former Tag Team Champions Billy Gunn and Bart Gunn squared off, Bart almost killed Billy with a stun gun. The move, not the device. Fast forward six months and now Billy Gunn is “Rockabilly,” a Honky Tonk Man that can neither sing nor dance, but not even in that funny heel way where it’s supposed to be the point. He just sucks at everything. He pins Bart with a swinging neckbreaker for what I believe is the first actual Rockabilly win without Honky hitting someone with a hair-loom guitar or getting bodyslammed by children or whatever on the outside.
Best: ALL YOUR STUPID RUUUUUULES
Hunter Hearst Helmsley didn’t have an “Austin 3:16” moment during his King of the Ring coronation, but the Raw after King of the Ring features him instantly becoming the Triple H was all know and occasionally love and most of the time tolerate by getting in Vince McMahon’s face about politics, and how he didn’t get a shot until now because politics, and how he’s never letting politics stop him again. He says the ring is his house, and we won’t know exactly how true that is until NXT blows up in around 2014 and we see our fiftieth or sixtieth Proud Papa mark photo of him backstage pointing at a new champion. Somewhere at home, a 21-year old Stephanie McMahon is like, “hey, now THIS is something I could get into!”
Mankind interrupts him on the TitanTron to a surprisingly ample pop, because those Behind the Mask Mick Foley interviews were seriously some of the best clips WWE ever put together. Actually, let me talk about that for a sec.
This week features the final installment of that interview, which ends with Foley getting mad about Jim Ross’ line of questioning and choking him out with a Mandible Claw. Ross’ hilarious gurgling noises still make me laugh twenty years later. Dude sounds like a giant fish that got beached only to realize he’s magical and can breathe air. HAAAAUGHHK!
Anyway, what’s interesting about the Foley clips in retrospect is that they end with that beatdown. Parts one through three either inadvertently or very deliberately turned Mankind face, but part four is built around what for all intents and purposes is a heel act. So you’ve got to wonder how intentional the fan response to these was, or if it was just lightning in a bottle and someone worked above their pay grade.
So yeah, Mankind interrupts Hunter on the Tron, and Chyna (in her first speaking role on Raw) tells Mankind to come down here and kiss her ass. Mankind drops the classic line, “It’s your lucky day, because I’m a good kisser,” but walks slash rolls into a beatdown. More on that in a moment.
Best: Tying Everything Together, Or
Best: “Commode”
The thing that makes these 1997 Raws so good is how much work went into tying each episodes stories together to form a cohesive, “bottle” narrative. Stone Cold Steve Austin was originally scheduled to face Brian Pillman at King of the Ring, but that got messed up thanks to some injuries and/or a comment on the weather, so Austin faced Michaels and got his Pillman match on Raw.
At King of the Ring, Austin interrupted a backstage promo from Pillman, beat him up and stuffed his head in a toilet. On Raw, he refers to the toilet as a “commode,” which is the most true southerner thing Austin’s said since calling dude a “Judas priest.” My grandma called the toilet a commode. Technically a commode is a piece of furniture containing a concealed chamber pot, so it’s like an ass-first trip to Narnia. Modern commodes are those spider shitters that are like, old people walkers with toilets in the middle. I swear, if he’d referred to poop as “hack” he would’ve just BEEN my grandma.
But yeah, Pillman vs. Austin is the night’s advertised main event. Remember: the WWF would NEVER bait and switch you like WCW.
Early in the night, Goldust gets a European Championship match against the champion, the British Bulldog. Goldust is in a weird place here, because when he was a predatory gay panic Oscar statue he won a lot of matches, but now that he’s a down-home family man in colorful paint, he can’t win anything. Dude got slurred and pinned by Jerry Lawler, who in the WWF Universe is like one step above “aggressive fan.”
Bulldog vs. Goldust ends in a double count-out, which referee Tim White clearly wanted to happen. They roll outside of the ring, and before they’re on their feet he’s at like, seven. They’re doing some floor punching, nothing really out of the ordinary, and White’s like, ONETWOTHREEFOURTEN YOU’RE OUT RING THE BELL. He’s playing One Two Three Red Light with them or something. Marlena throws hands at Bulldog a few times, which leads to him standing over her with a chair, threatening to hit her. Before that can happen, the World’s Most Dangerous Samaritan Ken Shamrock hits the ring, suplexes Bulldog and MIXED-MARTIALLY stands him off.
Shamrock returns later to once again even the odds, suplexing Jim Neidhart to keep him from interfering in a Sid vs. Owen Hart non-title match. The interference interference distracts Owen long enough for Sid to chokeslam him and pin him, giving Sid not only the beloved non-title victory, but (if I’m remembering correctly) his last meaningful match on Raw until 2012.
When it’s time for Pillman vs. Austin, the Hart Foundation pays Austin back for the swirlie and jumps him from behind. They beat him down 4-on-1 until Mankind of all people shows up, dragging Pillman into the ring. With Austin incapacitated and at least ONE of the scheduled participants doing wrestling things in the ring, they just roll with Pillman vs. Mankind as the main event. Sure!
And, of course, the Harts run back down and jump Mankind when he grabs Pillman in a Mandible Claw. A post-match melee breaks out, and Austin starts hobbling back down to the ring … only to be passed by a sprinting Ken Shamrock, who is EXTREMELY INTO suplexing Hart Foundation guys right now. Austin and Shamrock manage to run off the Foundation, and if you’ve ever seen Stone Cold Steve Austin do anything ever, you know what’s next.
Austin makes sure to give Mankind the finger on his way out, because DTA.
This is all building to Canadian Stampede, by the way, a 10-man tag legendary almost exclusively for how hot the crowd is. It’s amazing what you can do when your character motivations make sense, your talent is engaged and enthusiastic and you don’t ignore what the crowd’s trying to tell you. Keep that in mind was you watch WrestleMania this year.
