Pre-show notes:
– Welcome to another Best And Worst Retro Report, this time celebrating the 1000th episode of WWE Raw. Make sure to come back tomorrow and read the Best And Worst of that show, if I can make it through four hours of Rock and D-X without going into teenage acid flashbacks and throwing myself through a window.
– This report is thanks to WWE Fan Nation, who put up the show in its entirety this week. Feel free to go watch that first, or watch it along with me.
– If you’re reading this on Monday afternoon (and it’s still July 23), make sure to head over to our Raw 1000 celebration thread, featuring special celebrity guests like NXT’s Derrick Bateman, awesome rap guy Action Bronson and Mr. Belding from ‘Saved By The Bell’. You seriously do not want to miss that.
– Comments, likes, twitter shares, and everything else are deeply appreciated. If you want to see more retro reports, get the word out and make this one a success!
And now, from tween Brandon Stroud, the Best And Worst Of WWF Monday Night Raw for January 11, 1993.
Best: Nostalgia For Wrestling I Never Experienced
I’ve done a handful of retro reports (like Best And Worst Of WWE No Way Out 2007 and Best And Worst Of WWF Royal Rumble 2000), but I’ve never recapped anything this old, or anything this important to my early teens. Because of this, the column requires two big disclaimers to explain my point of view.
1. I’ve been a wrestling fan from birth, but I was an NWA/WCW kid, and aside from The Wrestling Album and that Hulk Hogan workout set that came with a cassette tape of him screaming motivations at you, I wasn’t in love with the (then-) WWF. I liked it, because I liked wrestling, but it was mostly the stuff I hated about the sport, even as a kid — it was slower, broader, the wrestlers were cartoon characters and everything looked super fake.
2. As I get older (and am forced to write Raw columns on the reg) I get more and more into the stupider parts of wrestling. I don’t get excited for a good match now as I do for something gloriously unimportant to happen, and would legitimately rather see David Otunga sip his coffee and derisively roll his eyes about something than a 15 minute Kofi Kingston/Dolph Ziggler match. There are a lot of reasons why, and I barely understand any of them.
So yeah, as I look back at the first ever episode of Raw, I do so with the left side of my brain screaming THIS IS THE WRESTLING THAT MADE YOU SAD, THIS IS THE ONLY TIME IN YOUR LIFE WHEN YOU ALMOST QUIT WATCHING and the right going LOL DAMIEN DEMENTO. I was dreaming when I wrote this, so sue me if I go too fast.
Worst: Vince McMahon, Wrestling Announcer
One thing I’m sure of is that for all his character and promotional brilliance, Vincent K. McMahon was the worst play-by-play announcer in the history of pro wrestling. Worse than TNA Mike Tenay, worse than Michael Cole. I know the guy knows a lot about wrestling (he knew Droz could puke on command before anyone else, that’s saying something), but when he’s announcing he’s just going BAHHHH BAH BAHBAHBAH BAH MON DAY NIGHT RAWWWWWW. That’s it. He’s just screaming syllables, and sometimes they make words, but most of the time they don’t.
I’ve been online long enough to have made fun of Tony Schiavone for thinking every episode of Nitro was the Greatest Night In The History Of Our Sport, but Vince thought EVERY SECOND OF EVERYTHING was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, and f**king Samu or whoever would throw a hip toss and Vince would open his f**king eggsac and start screaming AHHNN BAAAAH LIEVABLEEEEEE. Watch the Shawn Michaels/Razor Ramon ladder match from WrestleMania X. That’s one of the best and most famous WWF matches ever, and Vince practically ruins it by screaming AHHNNN BAHHH LIEVABLEEEEE at everything. At EVERYTHING. Some of it can be believed, dude, they’re wrestling each other with ladders.
The other thing about him is that he’d never seen any moves before and could not identify them (LOOK AT THIS! WHATAMANEUVER) and he fell for every pinfall attempt ever made. Mr. Perfect could hip toss Ric Flair or whatever literally 20 seconds into the match and go for a cover and Flair could kick out before one, and Vince would go WAHHH TWOOO HE GOT HIM NO HE DIDN’T. Every time. Sometimes he’d go on for a week. WAHH TWOOO THREE YES HE GOT HIM MR. PERFECT WON THE MATCH IN 20 SECONDS HE BEAT RIC FLAIR HE PINNED HIM I SAW IT and then get up and gather his belongings and take off his headset and wander off, and f**king four hours later he’d be at home having dinner and his eyes would bulge out and he’d stand up and suddenly scream NO HE DIDN’T~! The worst. Just the worst.
Part of the problem with being a wrestling fan who isn’t necessarily “smart” but can pay attention is that you kinda have to hold hands with everyone else and cross the same street. The wrestling will sorta organically create the drama, and the reason matches have beginnings, middles and ends is so the beginnings and middles can make the ends exciting. I do not need to cum in my pants because The Dumpster almost pinned somebody off a bodyslam.
Worst: ROB BARTLETT, YOU GUYS
Maybe I’m a bad wrestling fan, but I’d completely forgotten about Rob Bartlett. When Bobby Heenan shows up at the beginning of the show and finds out he’s been replaced, he asks BY WHO, and Sean Mooney (who I love, because he was on my baseball blooper tapes) tells him “Rob Bartlett” frankly, Heenan and I have the same reaction. WHO?? I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ROB BARTLETT LET BOBBY HEENAN IN.
The worst kind of funny guy in our world, worse than the Twitter parody or the guy who makes memes out of everything, is the radio shock jock. A certain kind of guy gets into his mid-30s with just enough hair and just enough weight and just as many pairs of sunglasses as necessary to think that insulting people and making fart noises on their figurative graves is funny. Others, who grew up similarly but did not keep enough hair or gain enough weight or buy enough sunglasses, latch onto these comedians because easy, shitty jokes are comforting and growing up means you’re “politically correct”. So they stay these mentally obese man-children forever, and there are enough of them to work a rating’s book and that’s enough for a rich guy with a radio station to keep paying them. They say something stupid, everyone else says “hey, did you hear that stupid thing this guy says”, and somehow that reads “personal and artistic fulfillment” to Radio Shock Jocks. Also, satin jackets.
Rob Bartlett is SO BAD. I guess at some point Vince McMahon thought “Bobby Heenan has been one of the best parts of pro wrestling for 20 years, let’s replace him with that guy from Don Imus who does a Bill Clinton impression”. Don Imus is Vince McMahon’s pop culture radar, in case you ever wondered why he thought Shelton’s Mama was hilarious and didn’t understand Paul Burchill’s pirate gimmick. Oh, and with syllable screamin’ Vince and Don Imus Guy on commentary, who’d make a good third? Why, The Macho Man, of course, a guy who can’t form a cohesive sentence without sounding like he’s challenging a f**king space alien to a Kumite.
Best: Koko B. Ware Vs. Yokozuna Is The Best Possible JTG Vs. Brodus Clay
The first match on the show (WWE Raw match #1, if you’re counting) is between two Hall Of Famers — Yokozuna, a Samoan guy pretending to be Japanese, and Koko B. Ware, a black guy pretending to be Owen Hart.
It says something that this is 100% a squash match for Yoko (as it should be, because he is awesome and important and Koko B. Ware is wearing the Square Pegs theme song on his body) and it goes 3 1/2 minutes. If this happened on Raw today it’d be over in 40 seconds. Most title matches on Raw don’t go 3 1/2 minutes these days. Lex Luger’s music would’ve hit and Yokozuna would’ve been distracted, allowing Koko to roll him up for a surprise three. Yoko would beat him up for two minutes after the match and stand in the ring going BLEAHHHHH while people thumbs-downned him. “You suck” chants would happen. We’d still be expected to think Koko is nobody and Yokozuna is important, because what they say is more important than what they do.
What I’m saying is that Yokozuna looked like a dominant motherf**ker here and killed Koko, but at no point did Koko look like a nerd they found on the street and invited into the ring. He looked like a wrestler who just didn’t have it in him to take on his cool new guy.
Best: 1980s Ring Girls In 1993
Real talk: When this lady came on screen, I thought she was Sable.
After I processed it, I kept rewinding to 1) look at her early-90s bunny butt, 2) see if Beastie or one of the other GLOW girls was gonna run out and hit her in the back with a rolling pin.
Best: The Way Bobby Heenan Says “Narcissist”
One of the weirdest developments of 1993 was Bobby “The Brain” Heenan’s brief run as the GAYEST MAN ALIVE. That’s not used in the pejorative sense, he was just super, super gay.
On the first Raw he dresses up like a lady to try to get in, then cuts a two-ish minute long video promo where he calls Mr. Perfect “horse manure” and, from behind his pink v-neck and sparkly jacket, assures us that NARSISSUS is the most perfect man. NARSISSUS, of course, turns out to be “The Narcissist” Lex Luger, clearly identified by video graphic as NARCISSIST LEX LUGER, and “narsissus” just makes him sound like he’s lisping. He might as well have been telling Mr. Perfect to watch out for BIGGUS DICKUS.
Seriously, watch Lex’s introduction and tell me it shouldn’t be on Pornhub.
He should’ve just started screaming SHOW THEM YOUR DICK, NARSISSUS
Best: The Executioners
Oh man, these guys.
Disclaimer 2 comes into play here as I quietly mark out for THE EXECUTIONERS, one of the last true jobber tag teams. I miss the good old days when you could fill out a show by putting two guys who could work under masks to make two other guys look good and put ABSOLUTELY NO EFFORT WHATSOEVER INTO NAMING THEM. You know how whenever pro wrestling gets mentioned on a sitcom it’s always THE MASKED MARVEL or whatever? Actual wrestling writers were less creative than that.
I also like pretending these guys have a big long kayfabe backstory. Like, they really wanted to wrestle but didn’t want their families or anybody they worked with in real life to know (a la ‘Learning The Ropes’) and had to cover up to live their dreams. Or maybe they’re like the Mark St. John lineup of The Executioners where one of the original guys didn’t want to wrestle anymore, so a young guy put on the hood knowing it was a terrible, go-nowhere thing. Or maybe they’re just two guys living in an era before Comic-Con who really like executions.
Worst: What WWF Did To Me In The Mid-90s
I mentioned earlier that the early-to-mid-90s were the darkest timeline for me and almost made me stop watching wrestling, and here’s why. I grew up an NWA kid, so I liked a big group of wrestlers who had personalities and characters but made wrestling seem tough and real and fun (the Steiner Brothers, Great Muta, Vader, Sting even). As Casey Campbell put it, “they were sweatier and I thought that meant they wrestled harder”. WWF had big slow guys and magical monsters who made wrestling look like a dumb thing for idiots (Undertaker, fake Road Warriors Demolition, whoever). I didn’t really like Hogan and Brutus Beefcake and the Hacksaw. I loved Ricky Steamboat and Cactus Jack and Stunning Steve Austin.
Welp,
In the mid-90s, everything kinda switched. Hulk Hogan showed up in WCW, instantly made Vader and Ric Flair look like helpless goons and replaced guys like Cactus Jack and Stunning Steve with, seriously, Brutus Beefcake and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. I couldn’t just go watch WWF, either, because when they’d get someone like Lex Luger they turn them into BIG DICK NARSISSUS or whatever. I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t. It’s Ricky Steamboat wearing dragon wings and spitting fire. It’s Stunning Steve Austin becoming “The Ringmaster”, or Dustin Rhodes becoming a movie-themed gay sexual harasser. All I was left with was neutered Sting and a neutered Four Horseman on one side and Man Mountain goddamn Rock on the other.
The Steiners briefly bucked that trend, because I’m like 99% sure the Steiners don’t know wrestling is fake.
Best: Steiner Brother Finishers Where You Think The Guy Is Literally Dead
There are few things I like more than the very end of a Steiner Brothers match, because Rick and Scott turn into perverse erector sets and set guys up for shit like doomsday bulldogs and doomsday DDTs and Steiners Screwdriver and 9 times out of 10 the guy they do it to is never seen again, and you just imagine him rolling around an ICU crying about it. I can’t remember how many guys I saw them shoot murder on television, and it was the greatest. Scott Steiner was the best wrestler in the world from the time he started backflipping onto his own head in WCW until … well, he started tagging against the Executioners on Raw.
One of my favorite Steiner memories, because I probably won’t get to write about a Battle Bowl on With Leather, is when Scotty got put into a team with Firebreaker Chip (the Chip that BREAKS FIRES) against Johnny B. Badd and Arachnaman, and Scott just stands on the apron for 80% of the match yelling C’MON FARBOOKER CHIP or whatever. He tags in at the end, destroys everybody and wins.
I think that’s what WCW did to me: they had phony cartoon wrestlers too, but they always let the real guys beat the shit out of them. Subliminal messages.
Worst: WWF’s Brief Infatuation With Pretending A Guy Is A Race He Isn’t
My opinion on Razor Ramon is not the greatest. It’s hard to have constructive opinions about these guys now because so many of them are important to the childhoods of wrestling fans today, sorta like how you could say “Great Muta mailed it in more often than not” and I’d scream I’LL KILL YOU and leap across the table and try to choke you to death.
But yeah, Scott Hall doing Al Pacino doing Scarface is not great. It might not be so bad if we hadn’t had Yokozuna on the same show, but WWF’s mid-90s thing of handing out racial identities like they were trunks colors is the worst. Hall eventually made the character self-aware enough that when he showed up in WCW going HEY YO we were in on the joke, but man, watching him dress like an 80-year old retired Floridian woman and say “mang” to a crowd of white children is depressing. I BEAD UP JOO BRUDDER, MANG. You were the Diamond Studd like two years ago, asshole, your tanner is the safest blackface ever.
Best: A Random Best For Anything Owen Hart Related, Ever
Owen only shows up for a second or two on this Raw, being beaten up backstage by Razor Ramon to help build Razor’s feud with Bret Hart. Because I write about Owen Hart even less than I write about Battle Bowl, I will give “Owen Hart getting kicked in the ribs while wearing his High Energy-esque Zubaz jumpsuit” a Best.
Everything Owen Hart ever did was a Best. Even the “leg out of your leg” thing. Everything.
Best: The Sherri Martel Version Of ‘Sexy Boy’
Zero Hour Shawn Michaels shows up on the first episode of Raw fresh enough into his Heartbreak Kid run to be an undercard guy, but late enough to have the full Sherri Martel screeching version of ‘Sexy Boy’. While they don’t appear on the show, the first episode of Raw is secretly full of the most bulletproof people in the history of WWE, people like Owen Hart and Sherri Martel.
Seriously, if you haven’t heard this (or haven’t heard it in a while), get ready for Shawn Michaels’ return on Raw 1000 with the best theme ever:
Okay, SECOND best ever.
Worst: Max Moon
According to legend, Konnan (let me speak on this) was supposed to be Max Moon, but he left WWF after a “backstage disagreement”, possibly centering around how f**king ridiculously awful the Max Moon suit looked. Paul Diamond of the Orient Express fit the suit, so he got stuck being “Maximilian Moon, Man Of The Future”.
From Wikipedia:
The suit was a very elaborate powder blue bodysuit with markings that were supposed to look like a circuit board and white protruding rings around his arms making him look rather “outlandish”. The elaborate outfit also came with two wrist devices that shot out fireworks and a jet pack that was supposed to make Max Moon look like a man of the future.
I want to do a gritty reboot of Max Moon and have him be a guy who can’t stop pulling down his pants.
Worst: That Awful Shawn Michaels Suplex Finisher
One of the worst things about playing WWF video games from this era is trying to set up and superkick people with Shawn Michaels, only to find out he’s got a SUPLEX as his finisher. Enter the Teardrop Suplex, where Shawn reaches between your legs, clasps his hands around your nuts and kinda Olympic Slams you over. It looks like it has less impact than a bodyslam, but it kills you. The crowd reacts to it with less enthusiasm than an actual bodyslam, and Shawn gets the win anyway.
The Teardrop Suplex is a great example of how lucky you can be in the world of wrestling, and how important getting and getting over certain moves can be. Can you imagine Shawn Michaels without Sweet Chin Music? He just looks like a Rocker still, right? What’s even worse is when he first started using it but before he added in the “tuning up the band” stomps, and he’d stand in the corner waiting for a guy to get up all awkwardly, like he knows he’s SUPPOSED to be doing something but doesn’t know what. It’s like now, when Zack Ryder hops back and forth making L-I hands and looking for the camera light so he knows when to do the move.
I’m trying to picture how differently WrestleMania 14’s title match finish would’ve played out if Austin had had to do “LET GO OF MY NUTS, NO” gestures before Stunner attempts.
Best: Babyface Kamala
The last quarter-hour of the first Raw begins with a recap of Kamala turning face, and while it didn’t really go anywhere, the clip itself is great. Kamala gets pushed around by Kim Chee and Harvey Wippleman, so the REVEREND WITH A DOCTORATE IN STYLE STUDIES Slick runs out and tries to protect him. Slick gets taken down, Kamala takes offense, and Kim Chee and Harvey get sent packing. Kamala gets extra points for communicating “I don’t like what you did and I’m tired of being pushed around” with a couple of belly slaps.
Worst: LOL Damien Demento
Hahaha, okay, so, Damien Demento.
Before we had Mordecai to make “do you remember that shitty goth guy who showed up to fight the Undertaker and didn’t really” we had Damien Demento, a character from “The Outer Reaches of Your Mind” who may or may not have made Weird Al famous by playing his parody records, I can’t really remember. All you need to know is that Demento’s WWF career is as follows:
1. Buy feathery shoulderpads
2. Lose to Undertaker on Raw
3. Get thrown out of the Royal Rumble by Carlos Colon in 1990-goddamn-3 and never be seen again
Damien Demento is what Sheamus would’ve been if Sheamus had come up in 1992. A tall-ish, strong-ish guy with a weird look who growls a lot and gets fed to the guy they plan on keeping. Oh who am I kidding, Sheamus would’ve been huge in 1993, only he would’ve been called IAN IRELAND and he would’ve ridden a horse to the ring.
Best: I’ve Never Really Liked Undertaker, But He Looks Like F**king Kawada Compared To Damien Demento
Young Undertaker (Youngertaker) is still a pretty fresh concept to me, because I literally did not watch a match of his more than once until he fought Shawn Michaels in Hell In A Cell. Youngertaker is a lot like Kane — a guy handcuffed by this gimmick where he’s supposed to be a barely mobile zombie who SUDDENLY FLIES AT YOU or whatever — and a lot of his matches from this era are Kane matches. Honestly they’re like Kane matches where both guys are Kane. Lots of CHOPS TO THE THROAT LOOKATHAT, lots of bodyslams and nerve holds, a couple of jumping spots and a tombstone. It’s fine, especially in an era when Doink and Crush were closing out your show, but Shane Douglas and Ricky Steamboat versus Brian Pillman and Steve Austin was on the other channel and my mind was sorta made up.
It’s nice to see poor Undertaker in the prime of his life, before he found out what happened to his parents, found out his invalid brother was still alive and could control fire, tried to embalm anyone, tried to get Black Married, dragged anybody behind his motorcycle, got chokeslammed through anyone’s burning bones, murdered his manager in a concrete crypt or traveled out into the desert with anyone to carry around motorcycles and make shoes out of snakes.
Best: Pre-Crisis Doink The Clown
Doink (or “Dork the Clown” as they call him for large parts of the show … thanks a lot, Rob Bartlett) was a pretty interesting character when he was a clown who lured children in with his smiling face and then CRUSHED THEIR DREAMS. It was one of the first ever experiments in discovering that a WWE Universe Member had the short term memory of a hamster and could be baited and disappointed over and over and over.
Doink’s rationale of “hey, I don’t care if these kids are cryin’, I’M LAUGHIN'” is also pretty amazing. They never sent him to John Wayne Gacy or Heath Ledger Joker Town, but they made him enough of a sleaze that you’d want to keep your children away from him, but not because you thought he’d murder them. That’s a fine line to walk.
Best: CRUSH ON THE MICROPHONE, BRAH
And the greatest part of the show is the very end, when Vince confronts Doink about making children cry at the request of CRUSH, a man who’d spent a few years dressing as post-apocalyptic S&M worker until remembering he was from Hawaii, wearing hypercolors and saying BRAH a lot. A LOT. Here’s a transcript of his show-ending promo:
Crush: YOU LIKE MAKE A KID CRY BRAH?
Doink: /wanders away
Crush: YOU THINK THAT’S FUNNY BRAH. I DON’T THINK THAT’S FUNNY BRAH. BRAH, THAT’S NO FUNNY.
Doink: /is off somewhere doing the Harlem Globetrotters bucket of confetti gag
Crush: GET IN THE RING BRAH
And somehow that leads to Crush chasing Doink around the ring, then rolling INTO it by himself and allowing Doink to make fun of him on the outside. I choose to believe this story ended with Crush showing up unexpectedly at a child’s birthday party, crushing the head of the birthday clown and cradling the child lovingly as it laughs.
Who am I kidding, this story wasn’t ever continued. No way this show got a second episode.
