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The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW–02.13.96

The SmarK Rant for Monday Night RAW – 02.13.96

Nitro’s getting so boring that I just feel like I need to go back and catch up on RAW again before I resume. There was literally nothing exciting to look forward to and it was about to go to two hours on the next episode?! No thanks. Probably more Hogan upcoming or something. I think you’ll all enjoy another three months’ worth of RAW much more than anything that might be happening on the May 27 episode of Nitro.

As a note for those keeping track, archival videos on Roku now crash to the main screen with an error message that says “Video not available, we are working on it.” Well, that’s encouraging two weeks before the biggest show of the year. If I thought anyone in customer service actually gave a shit, I’d be more encouraged. Luckily PS3 still works reasonably well, even if Xbox One is unusable.

Live?...I think? from somewhere, I forget really. Later confirmed to be live from Cincinnati.

Your hosts are Vince McMahon & Jerry Lawler

Intercontinental title: Goldust v. Razor Ramon

Razor clotheslines him to the floor to start and works on the arm, but tries the Edge near the ropes and gets backdropped to the floor as usual. We take a break and return with Goldust in control with a sleeper, as Vince notes that he’s RAISED THE IRE of the crowd. Is that some kind of racist thing about Ireland? Goldust goes up and Ramon catches him with a superplex and then dumps him to the floor with an impressive fallaway slam over the top. Goldust has had enough and walks out at 7:26. *1/2 Razor is unhappy with the situation and unhappy with the kind of smut that Goldust is perpetrating on TV. So he wants a rematch once and for all.

Dok Hendrix runs down all the excitement of In Your House VI, and then Vader comes out and beats the crap out of Aldo Montoya to spare us a Bodydonnas match.

The Ringmaster v. Marty Jannetty

Vince notes that the newly-bald Steve Austin is a STONE COLD man. With the bad hair and goatee Austin is basically now sporting the look he’d become famous for. Meltzer had a funny line in the Observer about his new look, noting that he shaved his hair off and shaved his charisma away as well. Yeah, that Austin, what a spectacularly boring dud he was. Marty gets a cross-body and Austin rolls through for two and dumps him. Vince keeps hitting the STONE COLD description as Jannetty comes back with a dropkick for two. Austin with a stungun as we take a break. And now the Network starts the buffering and skipping bullshit. Marty makes a boring comeback until Austin finishes with the Million Dollar Dream at 7:21, appropriate because everyone in the audience was snoring at that point. 1/2* Look into his eyes, he’s STONE COLD, sez Vince.

Meanwhile, let’s meet Mankind, and this dude has some issues.

Undertaker v. Tatanka

So yeah, this is the main event. Tatanka throws chops and Taker no-sells them, but the Papoose To Go puts UT down. And Diesel wanders out and threatens a cameraman with an Ax, which he uses to Smash the Undertaker’s casket backstage in an act of total Demolition. They just don’t make particle board like they used to. We take a break and return with Diesel’s contruction project having better workrate than the match in the ring, and I think the pieces of the casket are slightly less wooden than Tatanka. So Taker comes back and casually chokeslams Tatanka and finishes with a tombstone at 6:15. DUD

Larry Fling Live with Billionaire Ted. We take calls from “Randy from Sarasota” and he’s got problems with thinning hair. The Huckster needs next Monday off because of a vicious woman’s shoe injury. And then the somewhat funny skit goes off the cliff when they start with the mean-spirited attacks again about FTC investigations and all that bullshit. If they had ended with the caption “Owns a Sears Charge Card”, it would have been golden.

The Pulse

I’m about as excited for Wrestlemania 12 as I am for Wrestlemania 31 after this show.

Comments

  1. Raw gets pretty good-ish, or at least watchable, for the few weeks before Mania, and a month or two after. Once King of the Ring comes around, WWF exposes how thin it's roster depth is, even with only one hour to fill per week.

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  2. So...were they implying that Taker lives in the casket when he's not fighting? Like Dracula?

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  3. Something like that. Any item related go Taker and his special.powers

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  4. In recent pics he looks like he's 167 years old, so it isn't that much of a stretch.

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  5. He kind of looked like a vampire by the end of 1996, so it's acceptable. :P

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  6. Harlan Leverage IIIMarch 16, 2015 at 11:58 PM

    "And Diesel wanders out and threatens a cameraman with an Ax, which he uses to Smash the Undertaker’s casket backstage in an act of total Demolition."


    You totally Crushed that set of references.

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  7. I had the laugh at the level of troll involved on going back to the WWF now. Well played, Scott.

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  8. Half a star for a Marty Jannetty match? This Ringmaster dork clearly doesn't know how to work

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  9. "Meltzer had a funny line in the Observer about his new look, noting that he shaved his hair off and shaved his charisma away as well."


    Now that's one hell of a miss in retrospect.

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  10. Well, to be honest, the Ringmaster was a very boring gimmick.

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  11. MaffewOfBotchamaniaMarch 17, 2015 at 5:26 AM

    You made me Google what ''Raise the ire'' comes from, because I like stuff like that.

    ''Origin of IRE: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin ira; perhaps akin to Greeko istros gadfly, frenzy''

    So yeah, not ''to be all Irish''

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  12. whoo hoo, catching them both up!

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  13. I didn't know Tatanka was still around at this point

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  14. When they kept the Billionaire Ted skits to the "wrestling" stuff, they're mildly amusing and relatively harmless. But anytime they get into Turner's business dealings, they suck the meat missile. Unfortunately, we get more of the latter in the upcoming weeks.
    Too bad Scott didn't give a Scott Says for IYH 6. The crybaby match, HHH facing a garbage man, Shawn doing a Tarzan swing off the top of a house (followed by a great match), and Diesel getting dragged down into a hole by a dead man, it's all low-hanging Clique fruit for him.

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  15. Thanks for bringing back the Raw rants--regardless of your rationale for doing so.

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  16. I was really excited for Diesel vs Undertaker back in '96; Between that and the Iron Man match, I about destroyed my VHS copy of Mania 12 from all the re-watching.

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  17. That'll teach Bart for being a legit tough guy, fighting Butterbean.

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  18. Me too. I actually really like Mania 12 a lot.

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