Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Kane crafted a Vader-themed alarm clock and then burned it to show he means serious business. Also, Sunny peaked [spritzes self], the New Age Outlaws tried to murder a pair of blow up dolls, and The Rock shoot gave Ken Shamrock brain damage. Made his preexisting brain damage work, however you wanna phrase it.
If you haven’t seen this pay-per-view, 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.
Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports (especially now that the staff is … me), share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. After this, we’re officially on the road to WrestleMania 14.
And now, the Best and Worst of Western Union (the fastest way to send money 20 years ago) presents WWF In Your House: There Is No Way To Escape Texas, originally aired on February 15, 1998.
Worst: Shawn Michaels’ Back Loses Its Smile
During their casket match at Royal Rumble in January, the Undertaker tried to backdrop Shawn Michaels over the top rope, over the casket and to the floor. Instead of hitting the floor or the flat lid of the casket, Michaels went over like he was skinning the cat and went base-of-the-spine-first into the edge of the coffin. Michaels crushed a disc in his back and ruptured two others, and would have to — at least temporarily — retire from wrestling.
It was a very real injury instantly turned into Internet and locker room gossip based on the, you know, previous year of Michaels ducking out on shows for a combination of real and totally bullshit reasons, including WrestleMania 13 where he was supposed to repay the favor to Bret Hart for dropping the belt on the previous year’s show.
All we know going into World Wrestling Federation Brand Presents In Your House Colon How Are We Supposed To Escape Texas is that Michaels was suddenly unable to compete in the announced 8-man tag team main event, which was really only there to support him taking on Stone Cold Steve Austin at Mania 14. The hook becomes a Mystery Opponent, and from the opening notes of the show to the final moments before the bell rings for the main, the announce team is like, WHO IS THE MYSTERY PARTNER, WHO COULD IT BE, LET’S GO BACKSTAGE TO TALK TO THE STARS ABOUT THE MYSTERY PARTNER.
And then the mystery partner is just Savio Vega. If that wasn’t underwhelming enough, they didn’t even play up the fact that Savio and Los Boricuas had been satellite members of D-Generation X like the New Age Outlaws recently … they just have Triple H say he wants to wrestle it as a 4-on-3 handicap match and then reveal Vega as having been “appointed by the WWF.” Quickest possible review: you should’ve just put Chyna in the match. Although “you should’ve just gone with Chyna” has become par for the course in recent years.
Best: TFW You Realize Savio Vega Is The Mystery Opponent
Don’t have a lot to add here, I just wanted to share this image of Terry Funk and Cactus Jack using AOL on laptops from the 1800s in one of the most 1998 images ever captured. I’m not sure what I like more, Kevin Kelly’s expression or the fact that Terry brought a chainsaw to a chatroom. Join the conversation using Keyword: Hashtag!
Best: Unstable Sable
We start the show with the only good angle Sable was ever in: her boxer husband deciding he’d rather box during wrestling matches than wrestle, and that he’d rather hang out with two weird swingers he met at work than with his hot wife. He HATES his hot wife. He brings her out with him because he knows people think she’s hot, and then he gets mad at her when people notice she’s hot. I sure am glad nobody acts like this in real life!
Sable gets told to hit the bricks early in The Artist Formerly Known As Goldust and The Artist Formerly Known As Johnny B. Badd’s tag team match against the Artists Formerly Known As The Sister Of Love, but of course stomps back out to thunderous applause for the finish. Opening a WWF show in 1998 with Sable making bug eyes and slapping people is like opening a Texas Nitro with Psicosis and Juventud Guerrera. It’s a billion percent what people want to see. Sable starts throwing hands with Luna, which causes a distraction and allows the Headbangers to use Cocteau Twin Magic to switch out and score a cheap win. After the match there’s a pull-apart brawl and referee Tim White gets knocked over, not yet knowing how many cat fights he’d end up accessory to over the next several years.
The highlight of the match is absolutely Luna’s Mongo McMichael sell when Goldust grabs her feet, where she throws her hands over her head and falls over like someone shot her with a freeze ray. This sets up the mixed tag at WrestleMania 14, which is still (surprisingly or not surprisingly, depending on how you look at it) one of the dopest things on the show.
Worst: How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Wrestling Match
You know what’s really good? Taka Michinoku defending the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship against El Pantera for 10 minutes on pay-per-view. You know whats really, putridly awful? Having Jerry Lawler and Brian Christopher try to out-Memphis heel each other on commentary the entire match.
These guys are out there having what objectively might’ve been the best cruiserweight match in the company that year and Brian Christopher’s screaming AY WHATTA YA CAWL THAT I COULD DO THAT I BET HE CALLS IT THE BURRITO BLASTER. Not once or twice to like, establish that he’s a heel. Non-stop. For 10 minutes. HA HA LOOK AT THESE SHITTY WRESTLERS, YOU EVER TRY TO EAT A TACO WITH CHOPSTICKS, YA CAIN’T DO IT. For 10 minutes. It’s everything WWF’s coud’ve done right and everything they’ve ever done wrong with cruiserweight wrestling in a neat, 10-minute block.
The only redeeming bit is when Jim Ross gets sick of it and responds with, “I always wondered what it’d be like to work with Heckle and Jeckle.” God loves a good Terrytoons burn. Also pretty great is Sunny showing up to ring announce in future Mickie James cosplay.
This match gets a high recommendation, as long as you’re deaf or you’ve got a mute button.
Worst: You Know A Match Is Pointless When There Are That Many Open Chairs
The Quebecers and the Godwinns look like they’re wrestling in my old middle school cafeteria. I’m not sure why this match had to happen, or why they gave it 11+ minutes, or how those chairs aren’t completely empty, but here we are. Hope you like this pay-per-view quarter hour featuring two jobber heel teams fighting it out over a beef from the back end of the weekend shows! Spoiler: you do not.
Worst: Continuing That General Vibe, Here’s The NWA
when u realize people like the wrestling u hate
In their latest attempt to make crowds of WWF fans say, “wow, the NWA really sucks,” about a decade after they were competition, Jeff Jarrett defends the Open the Owarai Gate North American Championship against Blackjack Bradshaw. Like usual, they take about 15 minutes to get to a non-finish, but it’s not even a WCW crash TV nWo thing where everyone runs in and a wild brawl breaks out. They take 15 minutes to get to something you’d have rolled your eyes at if Jimmy Valiant had done it two matches into an actual NWA show 20 years earlier. The rundown was like, “go 8 minutes to set up Jarrett cheating behind the referee’s back but losing because he can’t even put enough effort into it to pretend to not get caught.”
But you aren’t here to read about Quebecers barn-burners and Jim Cornette’s horrible ideas for good finishes. You’re here because No Way Out of Texas is the pay-per-view where The Rock does the thing you’ve seen on Twitter. You know the thing.
Best: The Thing
I don’t think you’re a true wrestling fan until you’ve responded to someone with The Rock eye roll dot GIF.
Yes folks, this is the show featuring The Rock officially cranking his character up to 11 and deciding to be the most wonderful, obnoxious, self-obsessed human being ever born. Since turning heel he’s been “The Rock” Rocky Maivia, but this backstage interview where Faarooq speaks on behalf of The Nation and Rock just mugs his ass off slightly to Faarooq’s right is like a grand arrival for the character, setting up the “Rock gives Faarooq a picture of himself as a present” segment on the next Raw, and the Gennifer Flowers interview at WrestleMania that works in the $500 shirts, drops the “Y Maivia” and distills the man to a perfect Superstar.
The eye roll is funny, yeah, but the entire thing is great. He won’t stop mouthing “The Rock” for some reason and jiggling his titties, making “I’m the champion” gestures, and switching back and forth at random. He also responds to everything anyone else says with huffy puffy bug-eyes and sassy eyebrow raises, and … yeah, I’m remembering why the Nation of Domination Rock sparkled in my brain so much the first time around. It’s like this guy has the ability to be the biggest star in the world, or something.
The Nation is at full strength in the “War of Attrition” match against Ken Shamrock, three out of four Disciples of Apocalypse and a sleeping bag full of pond water they’re calling Ahmed Johnson. The highlight is Lawler asking Jim Ross what “attrition” means, Ross trying to change the subject because he doesn’t know, Lawler not letting him do it, and then them getting into a fussy fight about semantics that reveals NEITHER of them knows what it means. “It means elimination … to be eliminated!” is what they come up with. Note: this is not an elimination match.
It’s interesting to have a 10-man tag in the middle of the show when your main event is an 8-man tag, but what do I know? The crowd has a lot of fun with this, at least whenever Ken Shamrock’s in the ring, and he ends up blowing the roof off the place by actually tapping out The Rock and winning the match. Remember when it didn’t take 7 of your finisher and luck on top of that to beat him?
After the match, Rock decides to randomly blame Faarooq, and they argue and shove around until they agree faction poses are more important than personal pride and fist the crowd. The segregated teams of Gang Warz are all breaking up, and the stage is set for a member of the Nation to catch fire and become the next big thing. Guess which one!
Worst: Vade To Black
The Vader vs. Kane feud culminates the only way it could: with Kane no-selling a moonsault, no-selling a powerbomb, pinning Vader clean and the beating him to death in the face with a wrench after the match to make sure we all know Vader sucks and sucks ass. Kane’s gotta look strong for The Undertaker at WrestleMania, after all, and you can’t reasonably let the guy kick out of two and a half Tombstone Piledrivers if he’s hurt by, say, a 450-pound man backflipping onto him from like seven feet up.
The less said about this the better, but it’s fun to see Kane 20 years ago, when his character was the reason he moved around all slow.
Best: This Is Also The Pay-Per-View Where Stone Cold Steve Austin Hits Billy Gunn In The Face With A Garbage Can Like It’s A Heat-Seeking Missile
The show’s main event is a fun-as-shit 8-man tag where anything goes, but the mid-match Oscar the Grouch relocation effort is the key moment. It’s so memorable that I can link to the guys involved happily talking about it 20 years later.
If Shawn Michaels had been in this, it probably would’ve been elevated to Canadian Stampede levels of memorable, but the Savio Vega version is still worth a watch. It’s not much more than a wild brawl to keep the issues between Austin and D-X and the New Age Outlaws and the Brothers of Self-Destruction going heading into WrestleMania — and whatever Owen’s doing, which I guess is now “wrestling Savio Vega” — but it listens to its crowd, plays all the right notes when it’s supposed to play them, and features just the right number of impossible Dude Perfect garbage can throws to make it pop.
Austin wins, of course, because it’s the month before WrestleMania 14 and he’s so hot he melts the floor and falls into the earth if he stands still for too long. He also gets his first ever Stone Cold Stunner on Chyna during the post-match, which I’m guessing would’ve been another D-X beatdown had Shawn been around. Chyna asks for it repeatedly, getting in Austin’s face every time he tries to leave, setting up D-X being indignant about Austin being such an asshole the next night on Raw.
If you watch the light heavyweight match on mute and then skip to the main event, this is a pretty good show. Since that’s not really how time or wrestling shows work, it’s a thumb in the middle. Not even in the middle, really … it’s a thumb that’s retracted into the hand somehow, and you can’t tell if it’s thumbing up or down. There we go.
Next Week:
Ahmed Johnson doesn’t realize how shitty he is and loses his job, The Rock retweets himself, and Luna Vachon tries to eat a bouquet of flowers. If that doesn’t get you hype for WrestleMania, what will??
