Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: We experienced In Your House: Cold Day In Hell, a pay-per-view extravaganza built around all the stuff you see on Raw plus Ken Shamrock breaking Vader’s nose for real. On Raw proper, Bret Hart cut a promo so rambly that the show just went off the air before it got to the part where Shawn Michaels superkicks him into, then out of a wheelchair. Also, Scott Putski!
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 vintage Best and Worst of WWF Raw is War for May 19 (gasp), 1997.
Best: Crush Gets Cerebrally Assassinated
This week’s biggest storyline development (non-Hart Foundation edition) is that Vader isn’t medically cleared to wrestle in the first round of the King of the Ring with a Heavyweights-style severely deviated septum, so Hunter Hearst Helmsley — the man who was eliminated from the tourney last week — will get a second chance and sub in. As Not The WWF President Because We Don’t Know Where Gorilla Monsoon Is Right Now Gerald Brisco explains, the referee in that match told Hunter that he could only advance via pinfall or submission, so Hunter thought he couldn’t get disqualified. He did, and they don’t want any legal action to take place, so they’re giving him a second shot.
Instead of just beating Crush in a wrestling match, which we’ve seen Ahmed Johnson do about 75 times in the last six months, Helmsley decides to roll the dice and respond to expected Nation of Domination cheating with cheating of his own. He’s about to hit a Pedigree when Savio Vega gets up on the apron, causing the referee to meander over and yell at him to get on the floor. During this distraction, Helmsley tells Chyna to get up on the apron. It doesn’t work, but as Crush is reversing the momentum, the referee wanders over from Vega to Chyna. So with HER distracted, Crush drags Hunter back over to Vega. Vega fucks it up, accidentally kicks Crush in the face and costs him the match. Vince Russo was backstage putting this shit together like a sonata.
The Nation argue after the match, and the only guy who’d been eliminated in the King of the Ring tournament before this episode moves on to round two.
Best: Jim Ross, Sports Analyst
You know how sometimes Mauro Ranallo will ignore everything that’s actually happening on a wrestling show to shoehorn in a comparison about hip-hop, or something that happened in the news that week? Jim Ross did a version of that, but his was always college sports. And instead of sounding like he needed to drop a reference, he just sounds like an aging southern dude who’d rather be talking about sports than wrestling.
There’s a great moment during Helmsley/Crush where Ross goes off on a tangent about how lucky HHH is, saying he’s as lucky as the San Antonio Spurs, who just got the first pick in the NBA Draft. He goes on to explain that they’ll likely pick Tim Duncan of Wake Forest. Good pick!
Best: Jerry Lawler Vs. Alabama
Raw is live in Mobile, Alabama, so Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler goes full Andy Kaufman by interviewing some “real Alabamans,” aka the most pinhead redneck motherfuckers you could imagine. Lawler drops all his best sub-Jeff Foxworthy redneck material on them, calling them an “orthodontist’s dream,” saying the guy sleeps with his sister and making fun of their accents while happily mugging for the camera. They’re barely functioning as humans, so they don’t know what’s going on and don’t get upset. It’s the cheapest, oldest and easiest way to get heat, but as someone who briefly lived in Tuscaloosa, AL, I appreciate Lawler’s honesty and candor.
This gets paid off a little later when Alabama’s own Sparky Plugg, Bob Holly, pins the Intercontinental Champion, Owen Hart. Holly talked about the match in his portion of the Raw Is Owen tribute show:
“The one thing that really sticks out in my mind, what he did for me, was about three years ago we had a show in Mobile, and of course Mobile’s my hometown, and he volunteered to put me over, you know, right in the middle of the ring. And that’s what I really remember most about him.”
It might seem weird to modern fans, but WWE hasn’t always had a weird obsession with burying wrestlers in front of their hometown crowds. I think that started when Jim Ross started pissing them off. They humiliated him in Oklahoma a few times and Vince was like, “wow, this feels good, does anybody else come from a place?”
The Harts (and Lawler) are inconsolable, and they make up for it by finding Holly in the back later in the show and beating him up 4-on-1. One thing I liked about the Hart Foundation as opposed to the New World Order is that more often than not, the Harts would at least wait to see how the match actually ends before running in and ruining it. An nWo guy could be in control for 11 of 11 minutes, but if the opposition pulled off more than one move in a row to start minute 12, 17 guys would hit the ring.
More on the Hart Foundation in a minute.
Best: Jim Cornette Stays Old School And Maintains The Integrity Of The Business
One of the worst best parts of the episode is that it begins SUNNY’S SEARCH & SOAK MISSION, sponsored by Super Soaker. Imagine the Karate Fighters tournament, if the Karate Fighters were replaced with squirt guns and the hands were replaced with boobs. In retrospect I’m kinda sad that when Sunny started offering mark photos with her in bed she didn’t call it her “search and soak mission.”
Anyway, the joke here is that stuffed-shirt Jim Cornette interrupts Sunny’s day — more on those later, too — with some contracts she’s supposed to sign. If she doesn’t sign them, she’ll be, “all washed up.” In response to the water-themed idiom, Sunny sprays him with a Super Soaker. Corny’s sell of it is a thing of beauty. He looks like a Splicer getting electrocuted in Bioshock.
After the incident, Sunny assures us that, “wetter is better!” Looking back, I wonder if we can trace Sunny losing her spot in the company to Sable and all the subsequent legal problems she’s had over the past 20 years back to her not signing these contracts in a Super Soaker commercial. “These are so you can keep your job!” “Your contracts are ALL WET!” “I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU BLARRGHHH GURGLE GURGLE”
Worst: The Cruiserweight Division
You know how hard it is to get into anybody in the cruiserweight division these days when they don’t put effort into giving them characters beyond, “here’s a little guy with a normal name, here’s where he’s from, he loves to have fun!” or, if they’re a heel, “he’s all business!” Last week, WWF tried to convince us that we should get into light heavyweight wrestlers by way of Scott Putski, a bland guy with a bland name who does chinlocks and dropkicks. He pinned Al Snow. This week they try the same thing with Scott Taylor, a bland guy with a bland name who does chinlocks and dropkicks. He pins Al Snow. Hey, if it’s broke, don’t fix it, am I right folks?
Honestly, Taylor and Snow (as Leif Cassidy) have a fine match that ends with a small package. This was a great way to follow up Bob Holly vs. Owen Hart, featuring two smallish guys and also ending with a surprise small package. After the match, Snow gets on the announce table and yells about how he won, which is, again, exactly what happened last week.
Scott Taylor would go on to become one half of a gay panic tag team before transitioning into a breakdancing fan favorite. I can’t tell you how many people that also describes in the world of hip-hop.
Worst/Best: Vince McMahon Can’t Stop Talking About How Not Racist He Is
During the introductions in the second King of the Ring first round match of the night, Vince McMahon recaps last week’s interaction with Faarooq by saying he, so to speak, played the “race card.” Not to be confused with Bob Holly, who played the race car. Vince is like, “hey, none of us are racist, black people just haven’t been able to get the job done,” which is definitely a believable excuse from a 50-year old North Carolinian wrestling promoter who runs a predetermined fighting league.
Faarooq takes on his future blood rival, Rocky Maivia, and pins him strong in about 2 1/2 minutes with a Dominator. After the match, Crush and Savio Vega try to put the boots to Rocky, and Faarooq surprisingly waves them off. THIS IS A DIANE CHAMBERS SITUATION, FAAROOQ, I KNOW YOU THINK YOU WANT THE CHARISMATIC NEWCOMER TO JOIN YOUR BAR BUT IT’S ONLY GOING GO END IN HEARTACHE.
If you’re wondering what Ahmed Johnson thinks of all this, he would NEVER agree with Faarooq because Faarooq is a racist, but he also thinks Faarooq has a point and totally agrees with him. But he’s not a racist, because he likes everybody, and everybody likes him. But at the same time, he’s like, “actually Vince, you do hold black people down, but it’s fine.” He promises to be the Hank Aaron of the WWF and become its first black champion, which is not exactly what Hank Aaron did, but I understood the words “Hank” and “Aaron” so I’ll let it slide.
Best: May 19!
We now enter the “everything else on the show is fake, but this is REAL” portion of the program, with three segments built around the wrestlers’ off-camera lives.
Last week, the Darkman version of Paul Bearer returned to tell the Undertaker that if he doesn’t rejoin him, he’s going to tell everyone Undertaker’s greatest secret. This week, Paul interrupts a Taker promo to reiterate this threat, clarifying that it’s the secret he promised Undertaker he’d never tell as they were watching Taker’s mother and father being lowered into the ground. Spoiler alert, they weren’t buried very deep. Taker goes from, “I AM THE REAPER OF WAYWARD SOULS” or whatever to, “yo, give me a week,” and Bearer obliges.
Somewhere in the Bearer funeral home basement, a seven-foot tall burn victim is having a really bad day.
BEST: Mick Foley
This is also the episode that features part 1 of Mankind’s sit-down interview with Jim Ross, the brilliant, star and image-making segments that turned Mick Foley from a talented but underappreciated mid-carder into a beloved legend. They simply turn the cameras on Mankind and let him talk dramatically about his real-life childhood as an outcast who found out he could deal with physical pain, and chose pro wrestling because it allowed him to do the only thing he knows he’s good at for money. I can’t stress how engaging and revolutionary this was in 1997, before we’d sat with 20 years of Mick Foley being like, “here’s my family, I love amusement parks, I love Santa, RIGHT HERE in whatever city we’re in, thumbs up.” The best parts of Mick were never the likable parts … they were the grotesque, mangled, human parts that made him feel like one of us. I’m not sure they ever totally got that.
But yeah, if you’ve never seen this interview, watch it. Watch it with your mouth kinda hanging open. One of the most beautifully executed things to ever pop up on a wrestling show. Even now I’m watching it like, “aw, Mankind, I hope things get better for you. It’ll be okay.”
Best: DakotaDust
In the final IRL segment of the night, Goldust accidentally inspires the songwriting of Jakob Dylan by introducing more than one Marlena. He has his daughter, Dakota, dressed like her mom and lets her run around in the ring being a kid for a while before his match with Rockabilly. As a segment it completely falls apart — Dakota doesn’t want to do whatever they’d rehearsed, and just kinda murmurs into the microphone while wandering around in circles, waving at the crowd — but as a look into the adorable and frustrating lives of parents, it’s pretty great. Plus, baby Marlena is adorable.
Less good is the match with Rockabilly, which ends when Goldust hits Honky Tonk Man with his own guitar. Goldust doesn’t even get to win the match that started with him introducing the crowd to his daughter, and most of the commentary is Jerry Lawler calling him a “sissy” for crying in his interview. When he’s not calling Goldust names, he’s going in on a 3-year old. This and the Alabama stuff is pretty funny from a “heel going way too over the top” perspective, but Lawler brings that all crashing down next week and goes so far over the top he goes around and ends up on the very bottom.
Best: The Unlikely Duo!
This week’s show actually opens with a replay of last week’s missed wheelchair superkick, the post-match brawl, and an in-ring interview in which Stone Cold Steve Austin and Grove Street’s own Shawn Michaels argue about how yeah, sure, they’re helping each other, but they’re not helping each other. They come to blows, and the Hart Foundation (minus Bret) shows up on the TitanTron to run them down for being stupid, in-fighting Americans. They challenge Austin and Michaels to a tag team match next week, and the faces tentatively accept, but don’t want to team with each other.
They spend most of the rest of the episode looking for substitute partners. Michaels goes straight to Ken Shamrock, who is basically cross-eyed future Shawn Michaels crossbred with a pitbull. Austin refuses to put any effort into the partner search because he wants to whip their asses alone, promising to find someone who is “75 pounds or 75 years old.”
His first attempt is the 75-pounder.
Austin barges into Sable’s locker room, where she’s only wearing hot pants and has an Austin 3:16 shirt draped over her chest. Austin’s like, “hey, you wanna be my partner,” which might not have been a bad idea given how unstoppable Sable became circa WrestleMania 14. Sable’s like, “get out of my dressing room,” so Austin repeatedly butts out and butts back in trying to see her naked. When he realizes he can’t, he yells “JESUS CHRIST” and storms off. I honestly wish he’d tried the same thing with Sunny and had to miss next week’s tag match due to a severe super-soaking.
Attempt #2 is with the 75-year olds. Austin berates future Women’s Champion (not a joke) Harvey Wippleman into being his partner, but the Brooklyn Brawler shows up enthusiastically trying to take the spot. Austin responds by beating him up and calling him a loser. Brawler gets such PTSD from this incident that the next time they interact 3 1/2 years later, Brawler jumps backwards over a catering table to avoid a handshake. Continuity!
Back to Michaels. Last week, Bret Hart said he had a big surprise for the crowd, then refused to tell him when they got their America stink on him. This week, he and the Hart Foundation announce that the big surprise is that if Shawn Michaels is returning to the ring at King of the Ring, so’s Bret, and he wants a match with Shawn.
Shawn, having just completed a mission for Ryder, interrupts on the Tron and sweetens the deal. He’ll face Bret Hart at King of the Ring, assuming Bret will agree to have “no excuses” and handcuff a member of the Hart Foundation to each ring post. That still seems like a pretty dumb deal for Shawn, who could’ve suggested, I don’t know, handcuffing them to something far away from where he’s trying to wrestle, but wrestling’s wrestling.
Things are going relatively smoothly until this moment, colloquially known as the point of no return.
The insinuation is that married-ass and on live television Bret Hart had been having an affair with Sunny. As the story goes, it was Shawn who’d been sleeping with Sunny and they’d recently stopped seeing each other, so paranoid Shawn Michaels immediately assumes she’s hooking up with the guy he hates the most. According to Sunny, she was actually hooking up with the Bulldog. Bret vs. Shawn at King of the Ring never happens, of course, and the animosity continues until a backstage fight in Hartford where Bret yanks out a clump of Shawn’s hair and Shawn quits again. He does that a lot. He’d come back quickly, though, and eventually they’d have their match at Survivor Series. Pretty sure that went on without a hitch and nothing remarkable happened.
So.
After all of this, Stone Cold Steve Austin wrestles Jim Neidhart. After a few minutes Austin goes after Brian Pillman on commentary, and the match ends with another Austin and Michaels vs. the Hart Foundation brawl. Gorilla Monsoon phones somebody from off-screen, and it’s announced that next week, Austin and Michaels WILL team up to face Owen and the Bulldog together. That ends up being one of the best and hottest matches in the thousand-plus episode history of the show.
Raw is creatively nuking Nitro at this point, and if ANY part of the show not involving Austin or a Hart was as good as the parts INVOLVING Austin or a Hart, they’d be pulling off something special. The good news is that they get there, eventually, kind of. The bad news is that most of the actual wrestling never catches up, and by the time they refocus on that, everything else has become a 90-second parody of itself. But that sweet spot gets pretty sweet.
Join us next week for f-bombs, another guy eliminated from the King of the Ring getting back into the King of the Ring, and some “hot days” for the Undertaker.
