Previously on the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War: We tackled In Your House: Ground Zero — the final In Your House to use the house set — and its aftermath. Undertaker did his first dive, Shawn Michaels cheated and ref-bumped his way into a Hell in a Cell match, and Stone Cold Steve Austin is spending his time on the DL hitting a Stone Cold Stunner on anything that moves.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWF Raw Is War for September 15, 1997.
Everybody Fights!
Might as well lightning round the “everybody fights” segments this week, which take up about half the show.
Up first is an Intercontinental Championship Tournament round one match between Ken Shamrock and Faarooq, which ends with a suplex so casually and out-of-nowhere that Faarooq sells it by standing up immediately and kicking Shamrock in the ribs. The Nation of Domination joins him, which brings out the Legion of Doom to make the save for Shamrock and run them off. Everybody fights!
One (1) light heavyweight match later we get the Legion of Doom vs. the Truth Commission. This one ends in a disqualification when THE INTERROGATOR — Kurrgan, not Edge and Lana — gets involved. Hawk and Animal have trouble fighting him off, as he’s WWE’s rarest character class — IMMOBILE LARGE — and Ken Shamrock has to return the favor from earlier and run out and help them. That brings the Nation of Domination back out, and the black separatist group helps out the white paramilitary group from South Africa in a well thought-out scheme.
So match one ended with a 4-on-3 fight, and match three ended at around 8-3. It takes a while before you start to realize that the constant nWo attacks over on Nitro weren’t an anomaly or “bad booking,” really, they were what people in 1997 wanted to see. 90-120 seconds of wrestling, followed by as many people as you can fit into a ringside area aimlessly punching each other in the top of the head.
“Everybody fights” is also featured in this week’s main event, Bret Hart and the British Bulldog vs. the Headbangers for the WWF Tag Team Championship. If you read that match and went, “LOL, are you kidding,” congratulations, you’re just like everyone else, including Bret and Bulldog. You’ve never seen someone mail it in as hard as Bret Hart wrestling a Headbanger. They were NOT into it. Watching Bret trading holds with Headbanger Thrasher is like that scene in Annie Hall where Diane Keaton’s so bored during sex she literally leaves her body, as a wrestling match.
Bulldog easily wins the match, but it turns out he accidentally pinned the wrong Headbanger, and the match gets restarted. The Harts say nuts to this and decide instead to beat the Headbangers to death with flags. Because you’ve got to get from point A to point B without fully admitting that you booked this match. Flag attacks bring out Vader and The Patriot, and everybody fights!
Note: Also featured in this match is the British Bulldog ripping up an American flag by stepping on it, so take a few minutes to think about what Twitter’s and Tumblr Twitter’s response to that would be if anyone did it for any reason today.
Now that we’ve got the … entire show out of the way, let’s see what else happened.
Best: A Vulgar Display Of Power
Now that Scott Putski is on the shelf with a dislocated knee, the World Wrestling Federation is forced to go back to the light heavyweight division it had thrust upon it: the Michinoku Pro guy they brought over to job to the Michinoku Pro guy they actually wanted versus the expansion draft talent pool of Mexico that hasn’t already been scooped up by WCW. This week: Taka Michinoku, finally having his last name pronounced properly, versus El Pantera, who is a kitty cat. A cat with lots of Projects in the Jungle!
It’s a fun little match, especially if you love Pantera’s jazzercise cat onesie as much as I do. Pantera doesn’t get a lot of love in the Fed, but he does get a Light Heavyweight Championship title shot on pay-per-view a few months after this, because there’s nothing WWE loves more than booking an entire division full of people with, “everyone just hang out, nobody likes any of you but we’re taking turns giving you title shots.”
Speaking of segregated division (in two directions) …
Worst: Max Mini Tries To Get (Mr.) Lucky
One of the most Vince McMahon things about the World Wrestling Federation is the belief that all little people are perverted animals. Seriously, you can’t name a single mini WWE put any kind of love or support behind who didn’t immediately turn into a “horny little bastard.” They LOVE IT. El Torito got “horny” every time he saw Renee Young, Hornswoggle’s probably had more on-screen kisses than any character in WWE history, and here’s Max Mini trying to see up Sunny’s skirt.
Jerry Lawler of course is the one who gets to drive the short + horny jokes into the ground, but you can tell Vince is in JR’s headset screaming, “THEY THINK THEY’RE PEOPLE! SAY GOD MADE THEM WRONG.”
Mini gets the win over El Torito Classic and Piratita Morgan with a flying headbutt, thanks to help from his partner, the hilariously named Mr. Lucky. Fun note: While Max Mini is portrayed by Tzuki, the wrestler who played Máscarita Sagrada in earlier appearances in the WWF, Mr. Lucky is played by the actual Máscarita Sagrada. Neither of them are Máscarita Sagrada here, though. Wrestling!
Best: The Undertaker’s Terrible Threats
I’ve written about it a lot, but man, the Undertaker is one of the worst-ever talkers in wrestling. That sentiment might make you mad, but search your feelings … you know it to be true. The good news is that he was SUCH a charismatic performer and had such an ability to connect with audiences, especially in the one great “ridiculous character” holdover from (slightly before) the New Generation that people just accepted and bought and thought was cool. For a short example of what I’m trying to say, he taunts Shawn Michaels heading into Hell in a Cell with, “two men enter, only The Undertaker leaves with your soul!” That line would make Symphony of the Night Dracula break character and ask who wrote this shit, but Taker delivers it and it fuckin’ works.
Also of note, this show’s Undertaker/Shawn Michaels argument promo is (as far as I can tell) the first appearance of Shawn Michaels’ nearly-nude with skintight biker shorts look. He’d break out those little shorts for anything, including future special guest refereeing jobs, and only wear boots and sunglasses with them. To date, it might be wrestling’s all-time most punchable look.
What’s funny about it is how naked Shawn seemed when he was like this, when objectively (aside from some knee braces) he’s wearing more clothes than Stone Cold Steve Austin usually does. I never really thought about it, but shout-out to a team involving 1997 Shawn Michaels, all-time league leader Rick Rude and Chyna built around telling people to suck their dicks for soft intro’ing me into gender and sexuality as a spectrum.
Worst: Kidnapping And Sexual Assault Causes You To Get A Nose Ring
Dude Love finally gets his scheduled match with Brian Pillman. If you’ve been following along, you know that Pillman somehow won a wrestling match that gave him the ability to kidnap and force sex onto Goldust’s wife, because WWF law supersedes federal law and once you’re a wrestler, that shit’s like The Purge. But yeah, here’s Marlena in heavy makeup and a little dress with a nose ring looking sad and saying she misses her husband and child because I guess Sgt. Slaughter cares about enforcing hilarious dress stips but loses interest when a lady’s getting raped for a month.
She even tries to leave during the match, like, she’s trying to get away, only for Pillman to run out and pull her back to the ring. And nobody’s helping her. It’s so weird. As a reminder, this angle was supposed to retroactively make sense in that Marlena and Pillman were to have been in on it together from the start to mess with Goldust, but Pillman dies before that swerve happens, and yep, it’s just a psychosexual torture angle.
Best: You Can Only Hope To Restrain Him
Finally this week, we have Bret Hart (1) calling Stone Cold Steve Austin a “hoser,” which is amazing, and (2) Owen Hart revealing that he’s put out a restraining order on Austin. You can guess how well that goes. Jerry Lawler gets nosy about it and eats a Stunner, emphasized by Austin’s A+ field goal kick of his crown. Watch it fall apart on the bounce:
Later in the show, Owen wrestles the Patriot, Austin shows up to rip up the restraining order in front of him — again, shit’s like The Purge — and Patriot steals the win like a true American with a roll-up.
Next week, Austin faces the (extremely temporary) consequences of that action, and a not-so-innocent man gets caught in the crossfire. And then Austin’s got no chance. No chance in … somewhere.
