WWF Raw Is War: The Best and Worst of March 9, 1998

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: Mike Tyson joined D-Generation X and is definitely not turning on them at WrestleMania. The Undertaker returned to walk through some fire and/or brimstone, the New Age Outlaws got attacked by a couple of crazy dudes in a dumpster, and Colonel Robert Parker is here to make Jeff Jarrett 75% more entertaining.

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 9, 1998.

Best: I’m Sorry, I Swerved You

This week’s most important development is that less than a month before WrestleMania, WWF Champion Shawn Michaels can’t be at the arena due to his busy going to restaurants where the booths are air hockey tables somehow schedule. I spent most of my prep time for this column googling “restaurant air hockey booth question mark?” and it didn’t help a lot. I guess they’re just hockey rink designs and not functional game tables, but still, HBK’s out here looking like the Yodeling Wal-Mart kid wandered into a sports bar and started telling knock-knock jokes.

Last week Mike Tyson joined D-Generation X in a shocking display of t-shirt destruction, so this week Michaels is ducking a rightfully irate Stone Cold and sending the lazy pervert 1998 version of Triple H out to do all his dirty work. Tyson’s not at the arena either, and only appears in a pre-taped, sit-down interview with Jim Ross looking like the Snow Suit Nite Owl. I love that the guy dresses exclusively in backwards Kangol hats and sleeveless tees but has to bundle up if he’s gonna sit still in a locker room and talk.

Stone Cold Steve Austin’s response to all of this is to remain calm and wait for next week, when he’ll have an opportunity to confront them. LOL, just kidding, he takes the show hostage for two segments and a commercial break, threatens the entire company, calls Pat Patterson a toothless grandpa and emasculates Vince McMahon to the point of megalomaniacal corporate rage.

Austin’s major grievance, at least based on what he’s saying, is that last week Vince called Mike Tyson “unquestionably the baddest man on the planet.” He takes offense to that, and says he’s going to “sit in this damn ring for two hours until Vince McMahon comes out here and we get this mess straight.” Vince, desperately trying to avoid having a mudhole stomped in his ass and subsequently walked dry, sends out Gerald Brisco, Pat Patterson, Sgt. Slaughter and a bunch of referees, one after the other. The crowd gets more and more into it as it goes, and it’s one of those brilliantly put-together segments that worked really well once as a special moment, but has lost its impact over the years due to a bunch of people who aren’t Stone Cold trying to do Stone Cold bits.

When Vince finally arrives, he’s in ultimate chickenshit Turkey Man mode. He’s out there silently sticking out his neck at statements, overreacting, making bug eyes, the whole nine. Austin tells him he knows Vince doesn’t want Stone Cold Steve Austin as WWF Champion and challenges him to admit it, but he won’t. He keeps redirecting to crowd responses, and Austin starts pushing him around and tearing his jacket and trying to get him to throw a punch. It’s ostensibly Austin bullying the guy, but it works because (1) Montreal happened like three months ago, so we know Vince does some shady shit backstage; (2) Austin is the hottest act in the company and is flying too close to the sun because of it, knowing the company can’t do anything to punish him this close to a WrestleMania; and (3) due to his contentious relationship with Bret Hart, Austin probably knows better than anybody how Vince McMahon will turn on anybody, great or small, if it means a slight uptick in business. It’s a guy who knows his boss is a monster and the crowd who knows the boss is a monster confronting a boss who still thinks nobody knows he’s a monster. A+.

Vince leaves promising revenge — oh boy, will he attempt revenge — and Austin announces he’s going to interfere in the night’s main event and kick the shit out of Triple H. I swear, if Nitro had a Nitro mid-card and the Raw main event scene, or Raw kept its main event and got Nitro’s mid-card, it would’ve been the best wrestling show in history.

The main event is supposed to be Triple H vs. Savio Vega, and everyone in the world including the people in the ring know Austin’s going to immediately walk to the ring and start attacking everybody. Referees, stooges, Los Boricuas and more surround the ring to provide a level of protection, but LOL again as Austin’s able to shove Patterson down and start dropping everything that moves with CHIN-TO-SHOULDER DEATH BLOWS. He hits Stone Cold Stunners on Brisco, Vega, and a referee before wait just a minute, folks, it turns out Shawn Michaels didn’t ditch on the one night a week he works to watch hockey in San Antonio and is here tonight to sneak attack Austin.

It’s great because you aren’t quite sure who orchestrated what and when, but D-X has once again gotten one-up on Austin by taking advantage of the one thing Austin lacks: friends. He’s so bad at friendship, so to beat him, you have to attack him with your friends. It’s what made the Corporation work, and the Ministry, and the Nation of Domination, and the Hart Foundation, and really anyone who feuded with babyface ’90s Austin. Austin’s an OP lone wolf with only passing positive acquaintances, so if you feed him five or six guys to stun he’s gonna leave himself open.

The only negative here is that the show pulls a WCW and goes off the air with Michaels about to hit Austin with a chair, and the announcers screaming OH NO AN EXCITING THING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN YOU DON’T WANNA MISS THISSSSSS before it goes to black. Austin doesn’t show up to next week’s show with his brains hanging out, so I guess it ended fine.

Worst: When You Spend All That Time Making A Stone Cold Eric Cartman Sign And Go To Raw Just To End Up Next To An Identical Guy With The Exact Same Sign

These two either got into a fight or ended up married, I’m not sure which one I’d prefer.

Worst/Best: The Rest Of D-Generation X Deluxe Is Doing Nothing But Run-Ins

Want to see a match that would’ve been one of the greatest of all time if one guy hadn’t been a decade past his prime, the other hadn’t still been trying to get over the implications of the Montreal Screwjob, and it hadn’t happened in the middle of a 1998 Raw? Here’s Owen Hart vs. Barry Windham (holy shit), which is nothing but headlocks and Irish whips until it ends about five minutes in with a Chyna low-blow and a count-out. I’m honestly surprised Jim Cornette didn’t roll into the ring while Owen was being counted out and hit the referee with a tennis racket to get disqualified at the last second.

It’s all an effort to add more heat to the European Championship match at WrestleMania, but it’s actually kind of retroactively shocking how impotent of a champion Owen was in the late ’90s. When he was Intercontinental Champion he lost to a paralyzed guy, got it back because he accidentally almost paralyzed that guy, then only kept the belt because people would run in and cause disqualifications because they wanted him to be the one they eventually beat. Then he became European Champion by beating a guy dressed like the champion instead of the actual champion, and is only keeping it because the actual champion causes the matches to end, because he wants Owen to be the one he eventually beats.

To not end that on the saddest note ever, I’ll give the match a supplemental Best for Triple H laughing his ass off at the low blow. Watch this video starting at about the 6:50 mark (and ignore that it looks like it was filmed with potato jammed into a toaster) and enjoy brother H’s very real, very contagious laugh.

On the other side we have the New Age Outlaws doing a run-in after Chainsaw Charlie and Mick Foley defeat The Quebecers, at least letting us experience that PCO vs. Terry Funk match that could somehow still sell out any indie venue in the country.

There’s a whole lot of “the match is over and almost everyone has left the ring, except for the guy who needs to be there to get attacked” on this show. That exact same thing happens after Ken Shamrock and Steve Blackman defeat the Nation of Domination via (spoiler alert) disqualification. Everybody in the Nation goes up the ramp except for the Rock, who has to be in the ring to Ken Shamrock can snap and ankle lock him to death to thunderous applause. Seriously, Stone Cold Steve Austin is the most over person in the company, but Ken Shamrock and Sable were right there with him for a minute. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that everyone who likes wrestling is concurrently figuring out how much fun it is to hate The Rock.

Best: Luna Vachon Vs. Sable Might Be The Hottest Feud In North American Women’s Wrestling History

I know that a lot of women’s wrestling in Impact and NXT has been engaging and important, but man, it’s borderline absurd how into this Luna vs. Sable story 1998 WWF crowds are. Sable walks out and the crowd starts vomiting lava everywhere. Looking back on my lifelong misunderstanding of why anyone who prefer Sable to Sunny in any aspect of pro wrestling or finding people attractive, the pace and plotting of his feud between the Mero Family and the Goldust Key Party absolutely made her in the shade and gave her enough good will to coast for the remainder of her career.

This week is supposed to be Mero vs. Goldust with their seconds handcuffed at ringside, which of course ends with Goldust dropping a leg on the referee in a laugh-out-loud moment, stealing the key, and unlocking Luna. Instead of beating Sable up while she’s handcuffed, Luna attacks her with makeup to make her ugly, and also possibly to help her do better at Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

I can’t overstate how much better Raw is than Nitro right now, both in terms of having a real sense of urgency, creating identifiable characters who aren’t all part of the same lame run-in gang, and by appealing to casual fans by writing exciting, easy-to-follow stories instead of ever actually having good wrestling. WCW had the best wrestling in the country, but whoops, it turns out most wrestling fans don’t give a shit about the wrestling part of wrestling. Imagine if people hated the basketball part of basketball and only watched for the characters and drama and gossip.

brb, going to type a bunch of curse words and then delete them

Worst: Jerry Lawler Is Terrible At Cheating

Speaking of that, here’s a surprise: the worst part of the show is the Light Heavyweights.

Brian Christopher (RIP) loses to Aguila by disqualification when Jerry Lawler attempts maybe the worst cheating I’ve ever seen, non-Jim Cornette NWA division. TAKA Michinoku is at ringside for Aguila, so Lawler attacks him and then (for whatever reason) rolls him into the ring. The referee briefly checks on TAKA, and Lawler is there visibly shoving him (pictured) and yelling REFEREE, LOOK AT HIM, BE DISTRACTED BY HIM FOR A SECOND. Not verbatim, but that’s basically what he’s doing. Lawler then walks to the other side of the ring and trips Aguila, not noticing that the referee has no reason to continue checking on a random dude in the ring and is staring right at him. Lawler is shocked to have lost the match for his son, and everyone in the crowd is like, “oh, this is the part of the show they forgot to write.”

I’m honestly surprised Jim Cornette didn’t run out and hit Christopher with a tennis racket to try to make it a double disqualification.

Best: Undertaker Is The Spoopiest

Remember last week when the Undertaker rose from his grave like an Altered Beast and revealed that he’s now so supernaturally powerful that Kane can’t hurt him, and he’s also invulnerable to fire (?). This week Taker’s powers continue to grow, as his mere proximity to the arena causes technical difficulties and, in one of the most unintentionally funny moments I’ve ever seen on Raw, puts the fear of God into Paul Bearer by making cabinets open and close. Brother is attacking his murderous extended family via Haunted Mansion goofs.

Taker should’ve shown up to WrestleMania with a bowl of spaghetti and a bowl of peeled grapes and told Kane they were guts and eyeballs.

The big payoff to an episode of technical glitches and prop madness is Paw Bear and Kane doing a promo in the ring, the lights going out, and Undertaker teleporting in behind them in his finest Gothic smock. Before anything can happen, the lights go out again, and when they turn on, Taker’s gone. The crowd boos this, but come on, he needs to save his energy for next week’s attack: Pepper’s Ghost.