Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: The Nation of Domination had their locker room vandalized, leading to a great screenshot of Michael Cole pointing to a wall that says MALCOLM X on it with a second, squatter X x’ing out the X.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for October 27, 1997.
Worst: A Race To The Bottom
On last week’s show, The Nation of Domination had their locker room vandalized with racial slurs and the words, “HARTS RULE,” which definitely sounds like something the group-of-dads-ass Hart Foundation would do and not either (1) the violent Texan redneck who hates and can’t stop attacking everyone he sees, or (2) the group of sophomoric butt-pointers who won’t stop trying to get the Hart Foundation and the Nation to fight.
At least this week, Bret Hart gets a rebuttal. He explains that he can’t be racist because he comes from Canada, where there is no racial prejudice. First of all, you actually been to Canada, Bret? Second of all, a great way to explain how racist you aren’t is to say you love “yellow people.” Bret’s basing his view of hot-button racial issues on that line in ‘Jesus Loves The Little Children’ where we find out that “red and yellow” are precious in His sight.
Anyway, in maybe the least reasonable example of a heel believing another heel and getting into a fight, D-Generation X shows up on the TitanTron to say, “um, actually, Bret Hart is very racist,” and the Nation attacks him. I wish at least one guy in the Nation had been like, “hey, Shawn Michaels seems like he really wants us to attack Bret Hart all the time, do you think maybe HE wrote racist shit on our walls? I mean, he’s out here claiming via video tape to a bunch of African-American guys that the wrestler he hates and has a championship match with coming up is the Grand Wizard and uses the n-word. Anybody think that seems a little fishy? No? We’re punching Bret? Sure okay-“
Bret injures his ankle in the fight, which is just such a crazy coincidence as he’s supposed to be defending the WWF Championship against Ken Shamrock later tonight.
Hart vs. Shamrock is super weird, because think of how different things would’ve been if they’d just taken the belt off of Bret here. The Hart vs. Michaels match you’re building to doesn’t need the WWF Championship involved to make it pop, you ran an angle at the top of the show injuring the body part on Hart Shamrock would most likely target, and putting the title on a UFC star would’ve been a cool cross-promotional thing (even if UFC wasn’t a big deal back then). Shamrock could’ve been a transitional champ for ANYBODY, especially Michaels, and we still could’ve built to Michaels vs. Austin at WrestleMania.
Anyway, that’s … not what happens.
It’s so close, though. The referee gets bumped before Shamrock grabs an ankle lock, so nobody’s there to register Bret Hart tapping out and losing the WWF Championship. Shamrock thinks he’s won, so Hart uses the opportunity to chair shot him and grab a Sharpshooter. Shawn Michaels runs out to brawl with Bret, Shamrock beats up Shawn, and eventually it turns into a beaten up Bret vs. beaten up Shawn pull-apart. Everybody fights!
Bret, after the fight:
“The fact of the matter is, after The Survivor Series I won’t have to worry about it anymore, because I know in that one single match that no matter what happens I’ll finally get my hands around his little scrawny neck, and that truly is gonna be the end once and for all of Shawn Michaels, the boy toy, because in Canada I’ll be backed up 100% by all my fellow Canadians, and Shawn Michaels, you won’t be able to run across that border fast enough. You will be excellently executed once and for all.”
Vince: “Well, that remains to be seen.”
Best: Shawn Michaels Is A Real Butthole
As for D-Generation X, this is the episode where Shawn decides that trying to sneak his ball sack onto Raw was the funniest thing in the world. The dream of 1997 Shawn Michaels was to have a job where he could rub his nuts on a camera lens and spend the rest of the week yelling at everyone for not being as good as him.
Triple H gets a cheap victory over Goldust using Marlena’s brick purse, which still isn’t getting check by anyone before the match, because the guy Goldust was feuding with literally died and they need a few weeks to figure shit out. The highlight is Michaels crotch-chopping at Vince, and Vince selling it like we all might’ve before 20+ years of it.
At first I was wondering why Vince would be so against Hyper Sexual Shawn Michaels after being visibly in love with him for the past like, two years, but it’s probably a lot like when a guy sees his favorite Instagram model show cleavage for the first time and loses his mind because she isn’t “innocent” anymore. I also love the idea that maybe Vince screwed Bret and became “Mr. McMahon” because he had so much anger about what Shawn had become and no longer knew how to make him happy. FINE, HERE, I’LL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT, etc.
Best: Pad Ass Billy Gunn
The newly formed tag team of Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg get two victories this week: defeating the New Blackjacks in like two minutes, because LOL, and stealing the Legion of Doom’s shoulder pads. They show up during the main event — a non-title match between the LOD and the LOS Boricuas — to try their hand at the old, “get a title shot by costing the champions a match” bit. They end up tripping the Boricuas by accident and giving the champs the victory. Whoops!
The Outlaws/Blackjacks match is really only notable for two bits of commentary:
- Vince McMahon sending his best wishes to Gorilla Monsoon, who had been checked into the hospital with the declining health issues that would keep him from being a regular on TV and eventually take his life
- The announcement that USA Network would be showing a Survivor Series flashback special the night after Raw, the same night as the debut of Hulk Hogan’s Assault on Devil’s Island on TNT, featuring The Undertaker vs. Hulk Hogan, a match Hogan lost
Best: A Young Brock Lesnar Attends His First WWE Live Event
Worst: I’m Not Wild About This Push, Man
Serious Boxer Marc Mero continues his heel turn this week by (1) low-blowing Flash Funk, (2) working for a company that was seriously like, “we have Too Cold Scorpio on the roster, you know how we should push? A super serious boxing version of Johnny B. Badd,” and (3) being completely unable to handle the fact that he married a beautiful woman. A Make-a-Wish kid could meet Sable and be like, “Sable’s nice!” and Mero would uppercut them in the shitter and berate her for 15 minutes.
Worst: I Want To Know Less About Jeff Jarrett
Those sit-down interviews with Mankind went really well, so WWF creative was like, “let’s do that again, except for Jeff Jarrett, a guy who has zero of the heart or humility of Mick Foley and will spend the entire time talking about how he’s sincerely the best wrestler who has ever lived and is only not Hulk Hogan because people don’t get it.” The more I watch 1997 Jeff Jarrett, the more I see the template for Dolph Ziggler.
Slightly better than five minutes of Jarrett calmly explaining how great he is like he’s talking to a police detective is the return of the annual Karate Fighters tournament, called this year by parody version of Vince and JR that would make Billionaire Ted facepalm:
Real talk, why did Jim Ross always get so much shit for being fat? I’ve never looked at him and went, “wow, what a fat guy.” If anything, he’s got a normal Hank Hill body. Did Vince McMahon think of Jim Ross as his DUFF?
Best: Two Final Bits
This week’s Kane content is just dueling promos between Paw Bear and Mankind to set up Mankind vs. Kane for next week, but I wanted to share that “still to come” graphic because it’s cracking me up. It looks like Kane’s gotten to a really exciting part of a story and Paul is nervous about how you’re gonna take it.
This week’s Stone Cold Steve Austin content is pretty quick, too, as he’s literally in-and-out of a match to ruin Ahmed Johnson’s chance at the Intercontinental Championship. And while I know the story is that Owen Hart injured Austin so Austin wants to make sure Owen stays IC champ until he can beat him and take it away again, I think Ahmed Johnson ruined Ahmed’s chance at the title. Just saying. Dude is clearly in the twilight of his WWE career here, as he’s trying SO HARD to work gen-teel like with Owen and save his ass after years of just throwing dudes at the ground neck-first. Which is a weird place to be in when the actual story for the important people in the match is, “Owen Hart really injured a guy.”
That’s it for this week. It’s the best you can expect from a taped show two weeks before the big controversy that changes everything.
Next Week:
Goldust ends his marriage and decides to get weird for real, Shawn Michaels and Triple H kiss, and Stone Cold Steve Austin returns to the ring for a match with Ahmed Johnson that definitely happens.
