Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: In Your House: D-Generation X happened and set the stage for the next few months of programming, from In Your House: The Truth Commission all the way through In Your House: Ken Shamrock And Steve Blackman Should Be Friends.
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.
Hey, you! If you want us to keep doing retro reports, share them around! And be sure to drop down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of these shows. We’re almost to the 1998 Royal Rumble, and just to hit this joke one more time, In Your House: Jeff Jarrett’s Bad NWA Invasion Team.
And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for December 15, 1997.
Best: WWF’s Attitude Adjustment
let me stop you right there
Before we get too far into this report, this is the week Vince McMahon decides to announce The Attitude Era, aka “the cure for the common show.” We now have the Attitude Era “scratch” logo, and Vince going full old man by saying his show is like soap operas like “The Days Of Our Lives” and cartoons like “The King of the Hill.” I’m honestly surprised he didn’t call Seinfeld “The Seinfeld.” We know who never corrected Bret Hart for adding “the” in front of pay-per-view names. He was so good at The SummerSlam!
“It has been said that anything can happen here in the World Wrestling Federation, but now more than ever, truer words have never been spoken. This is a conscious effort on our part to ‘open the creative envelope,’ so to speak, in order to entertain you in a more contemporary manner. Even though we call ourselves sports-entertainment because of the athleticism involved, the keyword in that phrase is ‘entertainment.’
“The WWF extends far beyond the strict confines of sports presentation into the wide open environment of broad based entertainment. We borrow from such programs niches like soap-operas, like The Days of Our Lives, or, music videos such as those on MTV. Daytime talk-shows like Jerry Springer and others, cartoons like The King of The Hill on FOX, Sitcoms like Seinfeld, and other widely accepted forms of television entertainment. We, in the WWF, think that you, the audience, are quite frankly, tired of having your intelligence insulted.”
blink, blink
“We also think that you’re tired of the same old simplistic theory of good guys versus bad guys. Surely the era of the super-hero who urges you to say your prayers and take your vitamins is definitely, passe. Therefore, we’ve embarked on a far more innovative and contemporary creative campaign, that is far more invigorating and extemporaneous than ever before. However, due to the live nature of Raw and The War Zone, we encourage some degree of parental discretion, as relates to the younger audience allowed to stay up late. Other WWF programs on USA, such as The Saturday Morning LiveWire, and Sunday Morning Superstars, where there’s a 40% increase in the younger audience obviously, however, need no such discretion.
“We are responsible television producers who work hard to bring you this outrageous, wacky, wonderful world known as the WWF. Through some 50 years the World Wrestling Federation has been an entertainment mainstay here in North America, and all over the world. One of the reasons for that longevity is as the times have changed, so have we. I’m happy to say that this new vibrant creative direction has resulted in a huge increase in television viewership, for which we thank the USA Network and TSN for allowing us to have the creative freedom. But most especially, we would like to thank you, for watching. Raw and The War Zone are definitely the cure for the common show.”
This was a big deal at the time, and is closer to the current Happy Global Corporation™ WWE® than we’d been privy to before. I’m honestly surprised the next episode of Nitro didn’t start with Eric Bischoff looking into the camera like, “turns out you want your intelligence insulted MORE, so we’re bringing back Roddy Piper, and we’re gonna laugh about his one functioning hip while he beats up 40 members of the nWo by himself.”
Also important:
Worst: The Assassination Of WCW Monday Nitro By The Coward 1-800-COLLECT
If you’re a regular reader of the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro column and have been wondering where Lee Marshall and his greyscale map of the United States have been lately, they’re gone. Why? Because 1-800-COLLECT jumped ship like so much Madusa and threw their WCW sponsorship in a garbage can. It’s like years of Lee Marshall calling Tony Schiavone from backstage to tell him geographically-specific weasel jokes were for nothing.
Best/Worst: Ronda Rousey Learned It By Watching You
Remember when WWE was like, “we’re going to have the first women’s Royal Rumble match, wherein whoever outlasts 29 other stars including returning legends gets a title shot at WrestleMania?” And then like five seconds after it was over, Ronda Rousey showed up with zero (0) pro wrestling experience and just pointed at the WrestleMania sign, earning her the same opportunity as a Royal Rumble winner? That seems like a bad booking idea — you know, burying the entire concept of “working hard to earn an opportunity,” as Asuka could’ve skipped the Rumble entirely and just shown up on Raw like, “I’M IMPORTANT” and gotten the same match — but it’s the longstanding, tried-and-true method of getting yourself over in WWE.
For example, this week’s Raw Is War from 20 years ago begins with the Undertaker showing up and announcing that he’s the new number one contender to the WWF Heavyweight Championship and will be facing Shawn Michaels for the belt at Royal Rumble in a casket match. Keep in mind that the Undertaker’s last six months have looked like this:
- a loss to Bret Hart at SummerSlam
- a no contest with Shawn Michaels at Ground Zero
- a DQ loss to Hart at One Night Only
- a loss to Michaels at Badd Blood
- Paul Bearer telling the world that Undertaker is “a murderer”
- not competing at Survivor Series
- a DQ loss to Jeff Jarrett
THAT guy is getting a title shot, because he’s important, and because he showed up at the beginning of Raw and pointed to a hypothetical pay-per-view sign. Kane interrupts him again, Bearer once again plays the dead parents card (which eventually pays off, we promise), and the Brothers of Destruction briefly act out what would become the Pikachu vs. Pikachu scene from Pokémon: The First Movie.
Best: Japanese Wordplay From Jim Ross
Up next, we have a match that features:
– Something old (Jerry Lawler)
– Something new (Taka Michinoku)
– Something borrowed (the piledriver angle from Ted DiBiase and the Freebirds)
– Something blue (Taka’s tights) (or the fans when they realize they have to watch another Brian Christopher segment)
It’s Taka Michinoku versus Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler, the kind of match that makes you lose interest in Raw in 1997, but pops you so hard when it turns up on a “Best Of” compilation years later. This is more of a WCW match than we’re used to getting on Raw — WCW could rarely resist trying to get something watchable out of an impossible clash of styles, see almost anything that ever happened on WCW Saturday Night — and Ross mentions that Lawler was actually wrestling professionally before Michinoku was born. Remember when that was a fun fact, and not something you could say about everyone Lawler wrestles outside of basketball games?
Taka actually has the match won clean after dodging the Royal Fist Drop and hitting a Michnioku Driver, but Christopher runs out to cause a DQ. At just under six minutes, this match got at least three times more time on Raw than a Gang Warz match has ever gotten. The absolute highlight is the pre-match exchange between Lawler and Ross, where Lawler reveals he’s been learning Japanese, and Ross sells it like he’s King Hill from the show The King of the Hill.
Lawler: “Sukoshi, that means small in Japanese, and oki means big. Taka Michinoku is sukoshi, and The King is oki. Ad that little tempura shrimp is in oki trouble tonight!”
Ross: “You’re not an oki! I’m an okie!”
Best/Worst: The D-X Pre-Union
WWE loves getting Shawn Michaels and the New Age Outlaws together on-screen and calling them D-Generation X, but as you know, those were two very different D-X units. As the D-X VHS tape even implied, the Triple-H-led Outlaws and X-Pac unit were anti Shawn Michaels because he’d bailed on them. But hey, the closest thing we get to the revisionist history Super D-X (or “DX Deluxe) (or when X-Pac finally joins them, the “Super Pac”) is this pre-Royal Rumble time period where D-X was aimlessly running wild, the Outlaws were aimlessly running wild, and sometimes they aimlessly ran together.
The most important thing you’re gonna wanna know about this episode, even more important than the Austin/Rock segment or the Attitude Era announcement, is how the Legion of Doom describe D-X. It’s maybe the least threatening, crotchety old man thing Road Warrior Hawk ever said on television, which is saying something. He calls them, and I quote, “Michael Bolton before the haircut, Fabio, and RuPaul. Oh, what a rush!” Bruh, the only way that’s a “rush” is if a VH1 executive’s naming off stars of his new reality show. Comparing Chyna to RuPaul is factually incorrect for a NUMBER of reasons, so it’s a lot like when Xavier Woods described Rusev as “Ivan Drago-lookin’.”
The Outlaws — now actually called the “New Age Outlaws” — are the Tag Team Champions and the Legion of Doom can’t seem to get those titles back, so they try to rebound this week in an LOD vs. D-X tag team main event. That ends as pictured, with Chyna hitting Animal so hard in the side of the balls that he’s gonna have to call his next match The Road Warriors: Untucked! The Outlaws hit the ring as well, beat down the LOD and shave off half of Hawk’s weird, signature “parallel lines” mohawk.
They also debut their own version of the Shield Bomb to put Animal through the announce table.
It makes you wonder how different things would’ve been and how much more effective D-Generation X would’ve been as a lemon-lime nWo variant if a big name like Shawn Michaels had stuck around to lead Triple H, Chyna, the Outlaws and X-Pac. I’d probably have more kind memories of them if they’d turned into an ultraviolent bully posse instead of like, holding up hot dogs because they kinda look like dicks and wearing football jerseys with “69” on them.
And speaking of ultraviolence, the powerbomb through the table isn’t even the most violent thing the Outlaws pull off in this episode. That award goes to their post-match attack on Dude Love, which is supposed to be “Billy and Jesse use Mike Chioda to knock Dude off the stage and through a table,” and ends up being “Mike Chioda’s got too much back so Mick overshoots the table and jumps ribs-first into the fucking cement.” Jesus Christ, look at that spot. That might be the under-the-radar most painful looking thing Foley had to do in WWE, at least until a couple of months from now when The Undertaker starts throwing him off cages.
Best: Owen Hart Is Briefly Threatening!
In an extremely proto-Mr. McMahon segment, Vince McMahon calls out Owen Hart for “endangering the fans” by entering through the crowd instead of down the ramp, which seems like a fight he should totally be picking after like, wrecking the Hart Foundation’s lives over the past few weeks. Owen shows up in normal, non-branded clothes looking physically, aggressively imposing for maybe the only time in his entire WWE career, grabs Vince by the lapel and yells at him about how this isn’t fake, this is real life. The fact that he’s doing so during a time when WWE hired fake cops that actually looked like cops instead of indie wrestlers in t-shrits pretending to be “security” helps a lot.
Owen says he doesn’t care about the “stupid piece of leather with tin on it” — Bret and Shawn sure seemed to! — and will stick around in the WWF to kick Shawn Michaels’ ass. Instead of, you know, doing that, D-X plays paper rock scissors while making funny faces and decide Owen’s going to fight Helmsley, not Michaels. And that’s just … it. It would’ve made a lot of sense to have Hart beat Michaels for the European Championship, at least, to give him some revenge and actually set up a feud with Trips over something other than proximity to important people, but it is what it is.
Also Happening On This Show
Steve Blackman defeats Ali G of Los Boricuas in about 90 seconds with a bicycle kick and a german suplex. Booyakasha. Up next he’ll have a gauntlet match against the remaining members of the group and have to defeat Borat, Bruno, and Savio Vega all in the same night!
Mark Henry gets his second Raw “debut,” a little over a year after the first one. He missed a year either because he injured himself during training or they realized he needed at least another year of work before he was safe to work on TV, depending on who you ask.
In this one he’s dropped the USA motif in favor of basic workout clothes, because they’re already having him fitted for a leather hat and a Nation of Domination singlet. He squashes the Brooklyn Brawler and wins with a bearhug, the MVP of any “try not to actually hurt somebody” moveset. Henry would continue to be kinda bad for the next decade and then whoops, totally figure it out in 2008 when WWE’s like, “what if we made the world’s strongest man act tough instead of stupid, separatist or sexy?”
Salvatore Sincere responds to Marc Mero’s claims that he’s actually a jobber named “Tom Brandi” by re-debuting this week as Tom Brandi. He takes on The Sultan, who yes, is still a character despite it almost being 1998. After the match, Mero shows up and beats Brandi down to make sure everyone knows he’s definitely not a jobber. Note: that picture is the only time anyone’s ever clapped for Tom Brandi.
Best: The I.C. Depths
The very best moment of the episode, and the moment you remember this episode for, is Stone Cold Steve Austin chucking the Intercontinental Championship into the river. If you can remember five Raw segments from before 2000, this is one of them.
The beginning of this angle honestly doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Owen Hart was the Intercontinental Champion. Stone Cold Steve Austin wanted to kick his ass and take it, so they had a match at SummerSlam. Owen almost paralyzed Austin for real, but Austin still won the championship via roll-up because of an unfortunate “if I lose, I will literally kiss Owen Hart’s ass cheek in front of everyone” boast. Austin was too hurt to defend the championship and needed time off, so they had a tournament to name a new champion. Owen won it. So Austin started attacking everyone who’d have Owen beaten to keep him champion, because he wanted to not only get revenge on Owen for hurting him, he wanted his championship back. He finally kicked Owen’s ass and got it back. The Rock wanted to be IC Champion and stole the belt from Austin, and Austin had to beat up him and the entire Nation of Domination with a truck to get it back.
After all of that, Austin was like, “actually, I don’t want to be Intercontinental Champion, you can be it,” and gave Rock the title and the belt. He then beat up Rock and took the belt back, despite having given up the title, and here we are. It’s one of those situations where the actual content doesn’t make sense if you think about it, but the guys doing it are so good at what they’re doing you barely notice. Other than the dense paragraphs explaining it. [checks notes]
So yeah, this week The Rock wants to know what happened to his Intercontinental Championship. Having a championship handed to him without any work has turned The Rock into an egomaniac for almost no reason, to the point that he’s insisting he’s the “people’s champion” and is even telling his faction leader Faarooq to shut up so he can cut all the promo himself. It’s wonderful.
Austin shows up on the TitanTron and reveals that actually he’s throwing the Intercontinental Championship into a river, because fuck The Rock. He also throws in a snorkel, a mask, a regulator and an oxygen tank to assist Rock in his upcoming assumed underwater exploration. Rock’s faces 100% make this, as he looks like he’s simultaneously experiencing night terrors and desperately needs to talk to somebody’s manager.
It’s such a good segment that The Rock did an awful rehash of it 15 years later and threw a bunch of John Cena merch into the river while calling him a “transvestite Wonder Woman fightin’ crime,” which is somehow threatening than catchphrase-specific beeper messages. Probably because they don’t keep cutting to fan reactions the entire time like a laugh track.
A hugely important Raw this week, and there’s even more to come.
Next Week:
Number one contender The Undertaker fails to win another match, Vader reveals himself to be Santa Claus, and Mankind gets attemptedly murdered in a freezer. Also, the Stone Cold Steve Austin pickup truck contest begins, and we get (1) a sexy reindeer, (2) a sexy Mrs. Claus AND (3) a sexy Christmas tree. One of those is less sexy than you’re imagining.
If you haven’t had a chance, check out our With Spandex podcast with WCW legend Eric Bischoff.
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