Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Bret Hart has unleashed his PACK OF LIONS on the World Wrestling Federation, and wheelchair shenanigans abound. Plus, Ahmed Johnson sucks at disguises and almost killed Billy Gunn by shoot smashing a guitar over his entire face.
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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Up first, let’s check and make sure nothing happened while the WWF was in your house.
Before We Begin
Here’s what you need to know about Dixie Chicks In Your House: Cold Day In July. Wait, sorry, the actual name of this show was COLD DAY IN HELL, as in, “it’ll be a cold day in hell before you enjoy a show with three Ahmed Johnson matches on it.”
Ahmed Johnson Failed To Disband The Nation Of Domination
As you might’ve expected, Ahmed Johnson failed to live up to his “you’re going down” mantra by allowing Faarooq to go up.
The rub is that if Ahmed could use the power of the people, the assisted power of a small wooden plank and the protective power of like 17 kneepads to defeat three members of the Nation of Domination in the same night, the group would have to break up. He managed to defeat Crush and Savio Vega, the guys he’s been defeating every week for months, but was unable to defeat Faarooq thanks to the damned numbers game.
Because the World Wrestling Federation is the worldwide leader in telling inspirational sports stories about people of color, Ahmed would rebound from this setback by joining the Nation, shitting the bed with injuries for a year, then getting turned on by them again before ultimately losing and leaving the company. Maybe he should’ve strapped some kneepads to his neck and forearms?
Ken Shamrock And Vader Beat Each Other To Death
You might’ve heard of this one. This was Shamrock’s official WWF debut (against someone other than his sparring partners, in something more than an exhibition) and features (1) Vader getting his nose broken, (2) Vader angrily throwing one of the dopest lariats in WWF history, and (3) Shamrock just aimlessly kicking and punching for real because he doesn’t totally understand how wrestling works yet.
From a Vader fansite about backstage fights, via Reddit:
There’s a myth attached to the match that Vince chose Vader to fight Shamrock to punish him for being stiff against (almost) the entire locker room, more like Vince knew that Vader-Shamrock would make for a classic match, and it was. Not knowing how to work a match, Ken was as stiff as hell, “I didn’t realize how stiff I was in there with him. I wondered why Vader broke from the script at that point because I didn’t realize that I’d actually hurt Vader and, as a result, Vader was PISSED,” Shamrock later said, due to Vader bailing from the ring. If you watch the match closely, you can see Vader telling Shamrock (and the ref!) to ease up, ease up.” Shamrock broke Vader’s nose in four places and the Mastodon couldn’t walk for several days after the fight. Few seconds before the end Vader was finally fed-up with Shamrock and hit him with a hard clothesline, almost knocking him out, which awakened Ken. After that point Shamrock finally eased up for good and the match finished smoothly. Post-match, the viewer can see, Vader clearly was PISSED! But more at being hurt, rather than getting hurt, “That’s okay man; I was allowed to be me.”
Vader however got back at Shamrock at following encounters in the ring. Notably one time (after winning winning via count-out), as he walked away from the ring after the victory, he made fun of Shamrock’s nickname by asking the camera “Who’s the World’s Most Dangerous Man now?”. Ken commented (on the FMW rematch) “I got powerbombed twice, I had a problem before I went there. I had a tear in my lung, and I did not realize it at the time. I was coughing up blood earlier than that, I just passed it off as whatever, it goes away. Then when I went to Japan, I got powerbombed twice, and I remember choking, I could not breathe, I was spitting up blood. I was about to pass out because I was drowning in my own blood. It was pretty serious. Then when I went to the doctors they said that I had torn my lung.”
Or, “SLAP ME AS HARD AS POSSIBLE.”
The Hart Foundation Cost Stone Cold Steve Austin The WWF Championship
Before I forget, how funny is it that they got screencaps courtesy of WWF Magazine? Was the editor the only guy with a TV tuner card back in the day?
But yeah, Stone Cold Steve Austin had The Undertaker pinned with a Stone Cold Stunner — read: he had a convincing 2-count before the Undertaker would’ve kicked out, sat up and Tombstoned him — when Brian Pillman jumped the rail and rang the bell. Undertaker loves a good “somebody rang the bell when they weren’t supposed to” angle. In the ensuing confusion, Taker is able to (you guessed it) sit up and hit a Tombstone to retain the championship.
It’s a lot of fun, though, and one of the best Austin/Taker matches because it’s one of the only high profile fights they had before Austin got his neck broken. The angle is a lot of fun too, even though it probably should’ve just happened on a Raw, and Austin even returns after the fight to Stunner Undertaker again in one of the defining Stone Cold Steve Austin moments ever. If you liked it, buckle up, because you’re gonna see it about 200,000 more times between now and the time I stop writing these.
And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War for May 12, 1997.
Worst: Triple H Gets Eliminated From The 1997 King Of The Ring
If you’re like me and read that like, “wait, didn’t Triple H win the 1997 King of the Ring,” just wait a week.
This week, though, Nation of Domination band-reinforcer Ahmed Johnson defeats Hunter Hearst Helmsley in round one of the King of the Ring tournament when Chyna interferes, swatting him with a chair and causing a disqualification. What’s interesting is that the announce team spends most of the match talking about Ahmed’s troubled past as a gang member and a criminal, which is a hell of a lot like when Triple H wrestled Booker T at WrestleMania and they did the same thing. Hoping for a Triple H/D’Lo Brown match soon where Jim Ross speaks in hushed tones about the hard knock life you’ve gotta have to end up a CPA.
Also interesting is the post-match brawl. Ahmed and Helmsley get into it on the stage, and Ahmed starts grounding and pounding him. Chyna jogs over to make the save for Hunter, kicking Ahmed in the shoulder a few times. Ahmed completely no-sells it, so Chyna snatches him around the throat and (apparently) shoot rear naked chokes him back.
Ahmed’s supposed to be the company’s biggest and most powerful bad-ass, and Chyna just had him dead to rights on the stage in front of everybody. Fun fact: Both Triple H and Chyna were both Intercontinental Champions after this, but Ahmed wasn’t. Should’ve sold those boots, bro!
Worst: The Future Of The Light Heavyweight Division
Have you ever wondered what would happen if Desperado Joe Gomez and The Renegade fell in love and had a baby? If so, here’s the WWF debut of SCOTT PUTSKI, the son of Hall of Famer Ivan Putski and, if I’m remembering correctly, a character from 3D Ballz. Putski’s basically what would’ve happened if David Flair had grown out his hair and done a bunch of steroids before his debut, but still forgot to learn how to wrestle.
Putski goes up against Leif Cassidy, and poor Cassidy’s gotta walk this newborn faun through everything. I honestly wouldn’t trust Putski to stand up unassisted for five minutes, much less wrestle. All the while, Jim Ross is talking about how much he loves seeing these young light heavyweights, because they always give you great action. And just like today, WWE’s idea of “light heavyweights” is, “light guys who wrestle like heavyweights.”
Putski wins, causing Cassidy to lose his mind, flip out and attack him in what would prove to be the early stages of the transition into crazy-ass Al Snow. Putski manages to win the post-match attack, too, because we haven’t gotten to the worst of the anti-Rocky Maivia backlash yet and haven’t convinced Vince McMahon that 1997 wrestling fans are not super into the handsome muscular sons of guys from the 70s.
It’s a shame there’s no good actual light heavyweight wrestling on this show, huh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCtZXTuKVn0
Best: Good Actual Light Heavyweight Wrestling
Oh hey, here’s Rob Van Dam showing up from ECW to prove he can compete in the “big leagues,” earning himself the “Mr. Monday Night” nickname he’d take back to Philadelphia and use to piss everyone off slash make everyone love him for the next four-to-twenty years. He’s up against the teen jobber version of the nefarious BROTHER NERO. If you don’t understand the difference between exciting light heavyweight wrestling and boring bullshit WWE light heavyweight wrestling, watch Putski/Cassidy and Van Dam/Hardy back to back. It’s absolutely bizarre that nobody in the front office saw young Rob Van Dam and went, “we should build the division around him.”
Van Dam wins with a Five-Star Frog Splash followed by a split-legged moonsault, which wows the crowd and instantly puts him ahead of every sloppy luchador who has ever Whispered in the Wind in silence on Raw. Van Dam and Hardy would have so many more matches in multiple companies, including the only good match at the INVASION pay-per-view and a disappointingly ambitious ladder match at SummerSlam 2001.
Now that we’re done being exciting and interesting, we return you to your regularly scheduled Raw.
Worst: The Rest Of The Night’s Nation Of Domination Content
In one of the most unfair matches you’ll ever see booked, the Legion of Doom squashes Nation of Domination representatives J.C. Ice and Wolfie D. To put it into perspective for modern fans, imagine if Braun Strowman and Roman Reigns teamed up to face James Ellsworth and Carmella. The obvious highlight are the Doomsday Devices, which have Ice and Wolfie turned completely upside down before they’ve left Animal’s shoulders.
On a fun slash sad note, this is the end of PG-13’s WWF run, the end of the raps for the Nation of Domination, and the match that cost them an ECW job because they looked like such losers. They looked too much like losers for ECW, where Balls Mahoney was popular and had signature chants.
Finally, WWF Champion The Undertaker takes on Savio Vega in one of those matches where a Nation guy’s about to lose, so everyone else from the Nation hits the ring and starts stomping. I swear, this was the most popular match type of 1997. I’m surprised Scott Putski vs. Leif Cassidy didn’t end by DQ with a Nation of Domination run-in.
The only Best for the Nation on the night is the pre-match promo from Faarooq, wherein he talks about how hard it is for a black man to make it in the World Wrestling Federation. He calls Vince on never having had a black Heavyweight Champion — extra harsh and true coming from the guy who was WCW’s first black Heavyweight Champion — and how they only allow “token” black champions for a short time like Ahmed Johnson with the Intercontinental Championship, or Bobo Brazil being U.S. Champion. He says he’s going to end discrimination with kicking and punching.
In an hilariously tone-deaf moment, Vince interrupts Faarooq to Um Actually him. “This has nothing to do with you being black, what’s the matter with you?” Says the dude who is STILL putting every black guy in the company in a team together or feuding them against one another based on which ones “love to have fun” and smile a lot. Spoiler alert: Faarooq never ends up WWF Champion.
Best: The Bearer Of Bad News
As for the Undertaker, he’s being threatened by Mankind and a returning Paul Bearer, who has bandages wrapped around his face like Darkman. Bearer is giving Undertaker one more chance to make amends with him and get back together or else he’ll reveal a secret that only the Undertaker knows. Don’t want to give anything away yet, but it might involve Taker’s dead parents and the burn victim with fire powers Paul keeps locked up in the basement. Maybe.
Best: And Now, Whatever Bret Hart And Stone Cold Steve Austin Are Doing
So this week’s episode actually opens with another classic Wheelchair Bret Hart promo, featuring him putting over the Hart Foundation as his dream team and accusing Stone Cold Steve Austin of being nothing but “Texas cliches with barnyard overtones.” I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but that might be the funniest and most Bret Hart way anyone has ever been described. I wish they’d skipped the “Texas Rattlesnake” and “toughest SOB in the WWE” marketing for Austin and went hard on the BARNYARD OVERTONES.
Bret says he’s got a surprise for the audience, but gets annoyed that they won’t shut up and stop booing him so he just wheels away. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING works as effectively in wrestling as a heel saying, “if you don’t be quiet, I’m not gonna do the thing you don’t want me to do!” That shit makes a “USA” chant sound like a Carmella entrance.
Later in the episode, “U.S. Acres” Steve Austin cuts a great promo setting up his next six months of feuds, talking about how he carried Brian Pillman in the “bush leagues” and how Hart is a snake that needs his head cut off. He also wonderfully calls Hart “the Judas priest,” which is the most southern old man way of saying someone’s a hypocrite. Check out the barnyard overtones on Steve! Thank goodness Corey Graves or Mauro Ranallo weren’t calling Raw in 1997, or they would’ve been stumbling over each other to scream about how Austin is flying to the top of the World Wrestling Federation on the sad wings of destiny.
Owen Hart and the British Bulldog win the episode’s bizarre but at least different main-event, a four team elimination tag team match including Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon, the Head Bangers and the New Blackjacks. My full review of the match is, “they had to kill seven minutes near the end of the show and they were out of toy commercials.”
After that, though, we get one of the famous (and most infamous) moments of the Bret Hart/Shawn Michaels rivalry. What we see on the actual episode is Bret calling out Shawn, Shawn answering, and Bret cutting a good-to-bad-to-good-and-back-to-bad promo about how Shawn’s career is “hot and cold,” and how he bets he wishes he could superkick him right now but “doesn’t have the insides” to do it. He keeps talking until the show goes off the air. After THAT, Bret stands up and continues goading Shawn until he gets superkicked, and falls backwards into and then out of the wheelchair.
Now, what actually caused this varies depending on who you ask in what year and when and what mood they’re in when you ask. According to the rivalries DVD, Bret missed a cue and just kept talking, and neither guy knew they’d messed up the timing of the segment until they got to the back. There’s also the story that Bret did it on purpose to keep Shawn from getting his big moment on live TV. The extended version shows up on the Network, though, so check it out if you want to judge for yourself. There’s also the thought that all that’s bullshit, and they “kept the cameras rolling” to try to build hype for next week. After the after, the Foundation jumps Shawn until Austin makes the save.
No matter what, that kick into and out of the chair is pretty great. Join us next week for the reveal of Bret’s surprise, and Shawn’s commentary on the weather that completely cancels it out.
