Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: The Undertaker haunted Kane and Paw Bear in the same way a local church might “haunt” a hay ride, Luna Vachon gave Sable an extreme makeover, and Stone Cold Steve Austin calmly explained to Vince McMahon how figures of speech work.
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 Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for March 17, 1998.
Oh No: The St. Patrick’s Day Special Begins With A Shamrock Being Murdered
nice
Two unfortunate things right at the top:
- this Raw was preempted, meaning it couldn’t air when it normally would’ve on Monday night … March 16th. Meaning yes, one of the final Raws heading into WrestleMania 14 and the beginning of the “Austin Era” could’ve aired on 3/16, but didn’t
- to keep it feeling special, they advertise this as a St. Patrick’s Day special, which means yes, of course they’re going to start the show with the guy named “Shamrock”
That second one’s not specifically unfortunate, but what happens to him sure the hell is. The Nation of Domination interrupts him at the top of the show and they end up in a gamble: Shamrock promises he can beat any member of the Nation in under two minutes, so The Rock volunteers D’Lo Brown to go get his leg broken and prove him wrong. Shamrock grabs Brown in an ankle lock (because this is still rookie D’Lo Brown, who was great but had an OVR of like 65 at best), so with 0:15 on the clock, the Rock slides in and smacks Shammy in the back with a chair for a DQ. Shamrock proves his point, but like 20 seconds later he’s going to wish he hadn’t.
If you’ve ever had a conversation about the grossest chair shot in WWE history, chances are you know about this one. Shamrock rolls over onto his knees and tells The Rock to give him his best shot. Since we’re still about a year away from the 1999 Royal Rumble and those 11, child-scarring chairshots to Mankind’s brain, the world’s not educated to the reality Dwayne Johnson is very, very strong and doesn’t know how to pull a punch when he’s swinging a weapon. Also, the man’s got some deeply buried bloodlust. Anyway, he swings for the fences and absolutely fucks up Shamrock’s Christmas.
Jesus Christ. Even Ron Simmons is kneeling there looking at him like he should go to prison. You don’t really get the full effect of the shot until you hear the noise it makes, which sounds like a jet breaking the sound barrier.
Shamrock himself goes from “give me your best shot, Rock,” to “HELLO ZEBRA MAN ARE YOU MY MOMMY,” in an instant, and has to be helped out of the ring by a bunch of referees. It’s easier to do the Stone Cold Steve Austin “leave under my own power” bit when a 6-foot-4 Samoan hasn’t just turned your brains into sriracha and nearly split your skull sideways.
Kevin Kelly’s backstage a few minutes later like, “EMTs have just told me Ken Shamrock has a concussion!” No shit, Sherlock, he’s also got about a third of a Raw Is War commemorative front row chair lodged in the side of his face. The Rock jumps in with some straight-up ruthless heeling:
“See ya, Kenny, hope ya make it. Hey, the fact of the matter is this, is that The Rock couldn’t give two pieces of monkey crap about Ken Shamrock, but now The Rock has one concern, and I know all The Rock’s fans share the same sentiment, and that is this: who is The Rock gonna face at WrestleMania? But I tell you what, you and all your WWF compadres, you guys have to find somebody worthy of facing The Rock … I know it’s gonna be tough, but hey, ya gotta do it. I tell you what, The Rock obviously laid the smack down on Ken Shamrock in a major way, and I tell ya what Kenny, if you’re still alive after all of this, then you can enjoy WrestleMania and The Rock from the comfort of your own home. Michael Cole, good ol’ J.R., back to you.”
Michael Cole, being Michael Cole, responds to a man laughing at the possible manslaughter of his co-worker by telling us about Starburst candies. “Need a boost? Give it some juice!®” The Rock must’ve really needed a boost, because now Ken Shamrock’s cerebrum has the same consistency of a chewed-up pink Starburst.
Best: Also On This Episode, Kane Kills A Gorilla
I’m so happy we’ve finally made it to this episode. Joining Jim Ross and Michael Cole on commentary is the Phoenix Suns Gorilla, a Dancing Homer-esque NBA mascot who never talks, making him the second best Gorilla in WWE commentary history and legitimately better than about 75% of people who’ve called Raw. If you’re wondering why a guy in a gorilla costume is the mascots for the sun and not like, a big plushie Melanoma in sunglasses, here’s the scoop from NBA.com:
For the record, this mischievous mascot was born quite by accident. A messenger for Eastern Onion, a singing telegram service, came to the Coliseum during a home game dressed as a gorilla. As he left, Coliseum security suggested he do a few dances underneath the basket during a timeout and the fans loved it. So did the messenger, who kept coming to games until he was officially invited to be part of the team.
The messenger, a quiet young man named Henry Rojas, was anything but quiet in his costume. Given a Suns warm-up jacket, Rojas shed his shyness, and turned into an entertainment beast, dancing, joking with fans and, in general, enjoying himself to the fullest. Actually, once on the court, The Gorilla was a bit of a ham.
Her: “The Gorilla is very serious on the court.”
You, with science brain: “Um, actually, he was a bit of a ham.”
A true student of the game, the Gorilla makes his entrance from the top of the arena like Sting — shots fired — then invents Sin Cara’s full entrance, complete with a botch:
Note: at least the gorilla was doing it on purpose.
The Gorilla sticks around on commentary to pretend to be excited about a Jeff Jarrett vs. Tom Brandi match with Jarrett riding to the ring on a horse like the Music Row love-child of Godiva from GLOW and a Christmas tree, although if anybody’s going to find Jeff Jarrett matches interesting it’s someone who chooses to love Phoenix Suns basketball.
After a commercial break and a video package the Gorilla debuts his GORILLA 3:16 shirt (Gorilla 3:16 says “we just gave away Rajon Rondo for future draft pick and also gave the Celtics cash in the deal because we hate ourselves”) (someone on Pro Wrestling Tees please make that immediately) and fires some T-shirts into the crowd. As you know if you’ve watched Raw at any point during the past 20 years, the fans can only enjoy themselves so much before Raw’s Limit Break meter fills and Kane has to show up. The good news: this is still young, silent Kane, who has a deep and precious love of dropping mascots on their heads.
So yeah, so far on this episode we’ve seen a guy in sunglasses that look like the buzzer they give you when there’s a wait at Applebee’s ride to the ring on a horse, Ken Shamrock get transformed from a solid into a liquid by a steel chair, and a 7-foot-tall burn victim with demonic Hell powers do wrestling moves on a gorilla to punish it for making people happy. We’d need something tremendously corny and wonderful to top that.
Undertaker: “Hold My Satanic Beer.”
Early in the show, The Sultry Sable™ storms to the ring wearing her Serious Face and says some cusses to Luna Vachon. She’s like, “LUNA, YOUR A BITCH! KISS MY ASS!” Wrong “your” and everything, somehow. Seriously, her promo could’ve been cut by Bart Simpson’s insult machine, but the fans love it, because nothing says late 1990s like a riled-up Cinemax MILF in a catsuit screaming damn hell ass. Fred Durst should’ve exploded from behind her doing the “rollin'” dance.
Sable’s fans are as classy as you would expect during this. That that guy has no idea where the boobs are, but he loves ’em!
The reason I bring this up here (and speaking of ‘Rollin”) is because she challenges Luna Vachon to a dreaded in-ring confrontation, which Kane decides to interrupt because he needs to be back out there for the Undertaker to show up. Sure enough, the Undertaker shows up on top of the TitanTron like a sober Road Warrior Hawk and says something really creative and unique. Just kidding, he says he’s gonna send him to Hell and that he’ll rest in peace. Undertaker’s the kind of guy where the waiter says “enjoy your food,” and he says back, “you too, rest in peace.”
What you need to know here is that the Undertaker’s supposed to open a casket on the stage (with magic) revealing an effigy of Kane, which he would then set on fire by striking it with lightning. Instead, the order gets all jumbled up.
Undertaker strikes the casket with lightning to open it, revealing an effigy of … what is that, Michael Jackson? Greased-up Michael Jackson? And then with no further stimulus, the casket bursts into flame. So what was that, delayed All Japan Pro Wrestling lightning?
Paw Bear is left crying, either because he’s worried that he’s played these occultist Venture Brothers together too severely and now one or both of them is going to die via underground lightning fire, or because you can only see so many segments of guys in their thirties yelling at each other about hellfire and brimstone before you realize pro wrestling turned into a dorky LARP and you’ve ended up the guy who hands out the “lighting bolts.”
Worst: Triple H And The (Understandable) Worst Submission Ever
First, the bad news: during last week’s match with Barry Windham, Owen Hart lost his footing and rolled his ankle so badly it made him questionable for WrestleMania. Because there was a dark cloud hanging over that entire family from late ’96 on. Here’s the recap image, which is pretty gnarly.
Because of this, they had to hurry up and get the European Championship off of him and onto Triple H before Mania, just in case. Owen would end up being healthy enough to work the match, but it still needed more ballyhoo than necessary to make it work, and once again robbed poor Owen Hart of the ability to come away looking decent in ANY of these angles. Owen shows up to do color commentary in a tracksuit and a walking boot and gets goaded into an impromptu match against Triple H, which H handily wins with the most horrible looking but completely understandable ankle lock in history. This is what it looks like when you need to tap a guy out on live television, but you don’t know how bad he’s actually hurt and don’t want to cripple him:
Owen never taps out to the Calf Cuddler, but the referee calls for the bell anyway, and the ring announcer’s all, “the winner of the match AND ALSO NOW THE EUROPEAN CHAMPION, Triple H!” So not only were there some iffy, faux-Montreal vibes going on here out of necessity, poor, poor Owen Hart — the man who didn’t actually win the championship by defeating Triple H, he somehow won it by beating Goldust while Goldust was DRESSED as Triple H — somehow loses it by taking a ringside brawl into the ring, getting the bell rung on him despite him being visibly injured, and submitted by not tapping out. To put a real exclamation point on it, Triple H tells him to suck it a few times as he’s being helped away from the ring like a chump, or like the 1/3 of Ken Shamrock that didn’t go to Heaven earlier in the night.
Worst: I Can’t Express How Terrible This Is
Whatever the opposite of a “highlight” is, it’s Jim Cornette teaming with the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express to lose a handicap match against the Headbangers. Cornette’s wearing a t-shirt that says, “TRADITION RULES,” in case you specifically need to know who WWE hates the most. When the match ends, Cornette is saved by a repackaged Bob Holly and a repackaged Bart Gunn, now topping “Sparky Plugg” and the “Smoking Gunns” by calling themselves Bodacious Bob and Bombastic Bart, the “New Midnight Express.” They emphasize this by wearing race car tights with lightning bolts down the side that make them look like Lightning McQueen. NO THANK YOU, THANK YOU, NO.
Cornette puts them over, then immediately has them destroy the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, because there’s nothing Stone Cold Steve Austin, Undertaker and D-Generation X-obsessed crotch-pointing teens in 1998 want to see more than a race car guy and the shittier of two wrestling cowboys beat up a couple of Mike Wazowski-bodied 50-year olds they never watched in their prime. Hey, the New Midnight Express could’ve worked if either of them were good at wrestling or talking. Here’s Cornette himself on how bad this was, if you need another opinion.
The silver lining is that the team was almost Edge and Val Venis or even Edge and Christian depending on who you ask, and man, that would’ve changed a lot of things, including keeping us from a bunch of TLC matches and a pair of former World Champions. Glad they went with a pair of barfoids for the Nascar Fantastics instead.
Worst: Please Pay $60 To See A President’s Alleged Mistress Try To Have Sex With Wrestlers On Pay-Per-View
Best: Mr. McMahon Is Basically Here
I’m so excited to write about the prime of the Vince McMahon character. Too many of my Best and Worst of Raw columns have happened in the 2010s, where Vince is stuck between a comic book super villain and a beloved pro wrestling paterfamilias, so crowds cheer him and cheer him and then boo him for doing a mean thing and then cheer him some more. He’s Vince McMahon, you know? Even if you hate his guts, he’s got such an on-screen presence you can’t help but watch him. But yo, back in 1998 he was the epitome of spineless and slimy, and aside from some retroactive appreciation for how unexpectedly fantastic he was at playing a universally despised heel, the brother was not loved. Feel free to watch this entire interview segment on Daily Motion (or the Network, you cheapskate) if you need the proof.
Vince shows up to get grilled by serious journalist Jeffrey Weinerslav about last week’s confrontation with Stone Cold Steve Austin, and whether or not Austin’s telling the truth about Vince not wanting him as WWF Champion. Vince initially takes the modern WWE business model, claiming it’s not about what HE thinks, it’s about what the WWE Universe thinks. I love that WWE managed to change that from a bullshit heel promo talking point to their actual business model. When Kevin Kelly’s like, “c’mon,” Vince begrudgingly admits that Austin’s a violent sadistic redneck who probably needs someone to groom him a little to make him more palatable to the masses, if he’s gonna be the face of the company. It’s an understandable point of view for a millionaire businessman, and not for anyone who goes to wrestling shows. Kevin Kelly keeps pushing him, though, and Vince has to go full Mr. McMahon to end the segment. Does he want Austin as champion? It’s not just a no, it’s an OH HELL NO. Classic Vince McMahon moment right here, on a show that’s about to feature 2-3 a week.
Best: Jesse James Has A Real Hangdogg Expression
Finally we have Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie using their brains to outwit the only people on the show objectively less street smart than them, the New Age Outlaws. After weeks of feuding over dumpster-based combat and blow-up dolls, Jack thinks ahead and plans for a Road Dogg run-in during a Chainsaw Charlie vs. Billy Gunn singles match. The Outlaws aren’t expecting these violent Southwestern Dads to outsmart them — I know Foley’s from New York, but Cactus is from New Mexico, which is why his goddamn name is “Cactus” — so the Roadie steps into a dogg trap and ends up hung upside down from the ceiling via pulley. He says he doesn’t know how to get Road Dogg down, so if he doesn’t want to die up there, his ass better call somebody. Talk about a rope burn!
Note: I love that this is technically a callback to the Phoenix Suns Gorilla’s Sting entrance, and that Jack just took advantage of a system already in place instead of like, convincing us to believe he fashioned it and prepared it by himself.
Next Week:
you always Hoyt the ones you love
Raw returns to its regularly scheduled War Zonez as Stone Cold Steve Austin responds to Vince McMahon, WWF makes it very clear who they prefer in the Sable vs. Sunny blonde babyface valet Highlander war, and Gennifer Flowers begs wrestling fans to “come out of the closet.” Hey, not every episode is “gorilla getting chokeslammed” good.
